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I was waiting in a slow-moving line at a coffee shop. Immediately behind me were two young women, perhaps in their early 20s, who were chattering away, about their love life. What caught my attention was when the conversation turned toward dogs and dating.
One of them was explaining, "I sort of thought that Don was a possibility. He's good-looking, works in a good job, and he seems pleasant enough. The problem is that he has this really nice Golden Retriever named Shelby. When I saw them together he never talked directly to the dog and never petted him. Then when the dog strayed over to say hello to somebody who had come near us, he actually yelled at the dog 'No! Don't do that!' In an angry tone of voice, and gave a really hard yank on the leash to drag him back. It made me suspicious. If he's going to act that way to his dog, how is he going to act to me if we get into a relationship and I do something that he doesn't like?"
The other woman nodded as if she were agreeing with her companion's concerns. She then went on to say, "I think you're right. A man's relationship to his dog says a lot. I signed up for the online dating site, OkCupid.com. When I am scanning their possible suggestions for dating partners for me I always check the photographs. The guys who include their dog in their profile photo always rise to the top of the list for me, and they are the first ones that I try to contact."
I think that I chuckled to myself at that point, since in my briefcase at that moment was a reprint of an article by a team of researchers headed by Peter Gray from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas who also has an Association with the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University in Bloomington. The article was published in the journal Anthrozoos*, but the conversation that I was listening to seemed to be a directive validation of their research findings.
This new piece of research was triggered by numerous findings that dogs (and cats) are increasingly viewed as family members (click here for an example). If that is the case they reasoned that a person's pets or attitudes toward pets could have a significant influence on their choice of romantic partners. They started out with a an additional hypothesis that single women would place more value on how a potential mate interacts with their pet than would single men. This was a fairly large study with data collected from a sample of 1,210 individuals who were registered on the popular online dating site Match.com. The survey responses were coded on the basis of age and sex of the people responding.
In response to the question "Have you ever been more attracted to someone because they had a pet?", women were more likely to say "yes" than men. The effect was much stronger for younger women in their 20s (58%) and diminished with age (for women 50 years or older this was only 30%). Apparently men recognize this tendency since when asked, "Have you ever used a pet to attract a potential date?", men were four times more likely to admit that they had done so (22% versus only 6% for women). Again there was an age effect with younger men more likely to use their pet to make themselves appear to be more attractive.
Compared with men, women were nearly twice as likely to report that they judged a person based on how her pet or pets reacted to them (47% versus 29% for men). That reaction remains constant over their age span. Younger men (in their 20s) did pay some attention to how their pets reacted to their date, but this seemed less important for older men. The flip side of this question is, of course, how the date reacts to the person's pets. Again this was much more important for women than for men (73% versus 58% for men). Also women were much less likely to say that they would date somebody who didn't like pets than were men (26% versus 45%).
The researchers also asked whether including photos of the pet in an individual's online dating profile had an effect. In general women tended to feel that having the pets in the photo was a "turn-on" much more so than men, with the strongest effects again being for women in their 20s (46% versus 24%). Younger women were also more likely to believe that their date's choice in pets says a lot about their personality (83% versus 52% for men), however the difference between men and women diminishes with age on this issue.
These researchers also had a secondary hypothesis, namely that dogs would serve in more prominent roles than cats in shaping the view that people form about a potential partner. The reason is that dogs are more social and require more care and attention. This question was addressed more indirectly by looking at the responses of dog owners versus cat owners. Cat owners seem less likely to express the sentiment that they were attracted to someone because of their pet, and are less likely to use their pet to attract potential dates. Cat owners were also less likely to report that the way that their pets reacted to their date or their date reacted to their pets was important. For those of you who are considering using the data from this experiment to "troll for romantic partners" you should know that including a picture of your cat in your dating profile seems to have less of a positive value than does including your pet dog. The researchers summarize this aspect of their study by saying that "Responses indicated that singles less often advertised and were less responsive to cues of cat ownership or treatment."
As an overview of their study the researchers conclude that "Women showed more discerning views than men with regard to the role of pets in their dating lives…". They go on to clarify this by saying "Women seem to rely upon cues of how a partner interacted with a pet more than did men in determining whether or not the perspective partner was worth dating or considering for a longer term relationship." Furthermore these effects are strongest in younger women, with the greatest effects for women in their 20s and 30s.
As I got my cup of coffee and was turning to leave I overheard that the topic of conversation between the two women had moved off in a speculative direction. One of the women had asked the other, "What would you think of a guy whose dating profile included a picture of his pet parrot?"
Stanley Coren is the author of many books including: Gods, Ghosts and Black Dogs; The Wisdom of Dogs; Do Dogs Dream? Born to Bark; The Modern Dog; Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? The Pawprints of History; How Dogs Think; How To Speak Dog; Why We Love the Dogs We Do; What Do Dogs Know? The Intelligence of Dogs; Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Understanding Dogs for Dummies; Sleep Thieves; The Left-hander Syndrome
Copyright SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission
* Data from: Peter B. Gray, Shelly L. Volsche, Justin R. Garcia & Helen E. Fisher (2015) The Roles of Pet Dogs and Cats in Human Courtship and Dating, Anthrozoös, 28:4, 673-683, DOI: 10.1080/08927936.2015.1064216
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