Cat People Are A Little Neurotic, Study Shows

It's human instinct to coddle your children every once and a while, but bombarding them with phone calls, mandatory check-ins and overall, anxiety provoking instances, can disrupt future success as an independent adult. For parents who are excessively clingy and overprotective, it might be best to buy a fluffy dog to take out that "love" on, instead.

Researchers at UC Berkeley and California State University, East Bay, conducted a web-based survey on more than 1,000 pet owners nationwide, analyzing key personality traits and nurturing styles of people who identified as a "cat person," a "dog person," "both" or "neither."

Findings revealed that those who expressed the greatest affection for their pets were also rated among the most conscientious and neurotic of the group--probably not characteristics they should be putting on their kids, but maybe their pets? 

"The fact that higher levels of neuroticism are associated with affection and anxious attachment suggests that people who score higher on that dimension may have high levels of affection and dependence on their pets, which may be a good thing for pets," said Mikel Delgado, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley and co-author of the study, in a news release.

These results are strikingly similar to that of a 2010 study by researchers at the University of Texas, who found that dog owners were more extroverted but less open to new experiences, while cat owners were more neurotic, creative and adventurous than dog-owning counterparts.

CSU-East Bay psychologist Gretchen Reevy, co-author of the findings and a graduate of UC Berkeley and Delgado also gathered information based on an online questionnaire from male and female pet owners of all ages based on a classified add on Craigslist, their personal Facebook pages and pet-related pages on Reddit news. Findings showed that nearly 40 percent of those surveyed said they liked dogs and cats equally, while 38 percent identified as dog people and 19 percent as cat people. A mere 3 percent favored neither.

Questions from the project involved overarching human characteristics including openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Pet owners were also rated according to the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale, which measures affection for pets, and the Pet Attachment Questionnaire, which gauges "anxious attachment" and "avoidant attachment."

Those who scored higher on anxious attachment tended to need more reassurance from the objects of their affections. The survey results showed that younger people also tended to prefer a cat as their favorite pet. Both dog and cat lovers scored low on avoidant attachment, which was common among commitment-phobes.

"We hypothesized that more attentive and affectionate pet owners would receive higher affection scores and lower avoidant attachment scores, as higher levels of avoidant attachment would suggest distancing behaviors between the individual and their pet," Delgado concluded.

In future studies, the researchers hope to further examine the link between neuroticism and affection for and dependence on one's pet.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science.

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