engleski

DOG OWNERS AND THEIR DOGS VS. NON-OWNERS DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES IN PERSONALITY TRAITS

The aim of this research was to investigate differences in personality traits between dog owners and nonowners, as well as the relationship between personality traits of humans and their dog’s personality. The study comprised 194 participants, 120 of which had dogs, while 74 of them were not dog owners., Total of 147 women and 47 men participated in the survey with the mean age of 29, 4 years. Instruments used in this study were Croatian versions of Big Five Inventory (Kardum, Gračanin i Hudek-Knežević, 2006 ; Benet-Martinez & John, 1998) and Canine - Big Five Inventory (Jureta i Kopilaš, 2019 ; Gosling et al., 2003). Results showed that dog owners show statistically significant higher levels of Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness and lower levels of Neuroticism when compared to non-owners. No difference was found in Openness to experience. However, since the sample was rather small and convenient, these results should be interpreted with caution. Further analysis showed significant correlations between owner’s and their dog’s corresponding personality traits. The highest correlation between non-corresponding personality traits was found between human Openness trait and all dog personality traits except Emotional reactivity. These results suggest that dogs and their owners have similar personalities, but it remains unclear if this is the result of their shared environment or do people tend to choose dogs based on their own personality. Furthermore, the aforementioned conclusion should be taken with caution because dog owners assessed both their own and their dog’s personality, and the possibility of results being a consequence of same-method bias must be taken into account

Personality, humans, dogs, cross-species assessment, animals.

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