The idea that dogs tend to look
like their owners is big news to no-one. Even before the days of Paris Hilton
dressing her Chihuahua, ‘Tinkerbell’ in mini-me outfits, it has long been observed
that dogs and their owners often share a striking resemblance. Undoubtedly, the
tall, willowy blonde can be seen walking her Afghan hound in the local park,
while the Staffordshire bull terrier will be accompanied by an equally
tough-looking bloke.
Amusing as the idea might be, is there any real evidence to support this, or is
it just chance?
Believe it or not, scientists in
America have been funded to test this very idea. It turns out that pure-bred
dogs really do appear to resemble their owners. Professor Nicholas Christenfeld
led a study in which photographs were taken of dogs, and their owners. The
photographs were then presented to strangers, who were then asked to match a
person with their canine-companion, based only on physical resemblance. The
‘judges’ in the study were shown the owner’s photograph, plus two photographs
of dogs. One photograph was of the dog belonging to the owner, and the other
was of another dog. Judges were not told which dog was which, and were asked to
match the correct dog to the owner.
The study found that for
pure-bred dogs, their owners could be correctly identified more often than we
would predict by chance, suggesting that these dogs and their owners really do
resemble each other, on some level. However, there was no such result for
mongrel dogs. The study even found that there was no relation between how
frequently a dog could be correctly paired with its owner and the length of
time that the two had co-habited, suggesting that far from convergence, people
may actually select their purebred dogs on the basis on features they possess
which resemble their own. Of course, very few people will do this consciously,
but it seems that this is what happens.
When an owner adopts a mongrel,
this might simply be impulse, and the dog might not have such clearly defined
traits as the pure-breds. When selecting a pure-bred, the decision is perhaps
more considered, and owners can get the features they want (whether they know
they want them or not) much more easily. Hence, pure bred dogs tend to resemble
their owners, but we can’t say the same for mongrels. It seems that when an
owner selects his four-legged friend, he in fact does so on the basis of shared
traits. On what level dogs and owners shared attributes was, however, unclear
from the study. It seems dogs and owners couldn’t be paired correctly by simple
character matching- hairy dogs, for example, did not necessarily pair with
hairy owners. Perhaps there is something more subtle going on- the researchers
even suggest that similarities between dogs and owners may even extend to
personality traits!
This finding isn’t all that
surprising, if quirky, and a little cute. Humans are known to seek
companionship from other humans whom possess attributes and features like
themselves, even when selecting a spouse, as a famous study by Berscheid &
Reiss suggested, in 1998. Perhaps, the same applies when man selects his ‘best
friend’?
So, Science supports the
anecdotal evidence- it seems dogs do tend to look like their owners. Next time you
fancy a voluminous bubble-perm at the salon, how about getting yourself a poodle
to match? This is perhaps more likely than you think!
Citation: Roy&Christenfeld; 'Do Dogs resemble their owners?'. Psychological science (2004).
