Roy, M.M. & Christenfeld, N.J.S. (2004). Do dogs resemble their owners?
Psychological Science, 15, 361-363.
=20
So, do dogs resemble their owners?
=20
Three dog parks were visited.  Forty-five owners were photographed;
their dogs were photographed separately.  "Owners were photographed
from
the waist up, facing forward, wearing whatever clothes they had chosen
for going to the park and whatever facial expression they chose for
the
picture.  Dogs were photographed facing forward, with the whole dog
visible; they made whatever facial expression they chose, exhibiting
rather more lolling tongues than the owners." =20
=20
They found that judges did a pretty good job at matching dog owners
with
their dogs, but only if the dog was a purebreed. "The judges did not
make correct matches by simply matching hairy people with hairy dogs,
or
big people with big dogs.  There was some suggestion that people and
pets were similar in apparent friendliness, but the effect was of
modest
size, and not statistically significant.  It may be that the judges
used
some other more subtle trait, or based their judgments on a more
configural analysis of animals.  We also cannot know from these data
if
people can tell whether a particular person is an owner of a dog, as
opposed to, say, a weasel."


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