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8 January 2025

Beliefs About Cats and Dogs Among Pet Owners and Former Owners

,
and
1
School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Bendigo, VIC 3552, Australia
2
Laboratory of Ethology and Animal Welfare (LEBA), Department of Veterinary Medicine, Università Degli Studi di Perugia, via San Costanzo 4, 0126 Perugia, Italy
3
Departamento de Medicina y Cirugía Animal, Universidad de Córdoba, 14071 Córdoba, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Pets2025, 2(1), 2;https://doi.org/10.3390/pets2010002
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Abstract

Despite an increase in research into cat and dog cognition, behavior, and welfare in recent decades, it is unclear whether pet owners are aware of recent advances in our understanding of cats and dogs. Misunderstandings about the reasons for animal behavior can lead to negative welfare outcomes for the animal, and potentially distress for the owner, so it is important for owners to understand the latest science on animal behavior. Current and former pet owners (N = 224) completed an online survey rating their agreement with a series of statements about cat and dog behavior. After completing the survey, participants were provided with a document describing the latest scientific knowledge about each of the statements in the survey. For both species, participant beliefs generally accord with the latest scientific knowledge, but there is evidence of remaining beliefs about aspects of dominance training theory in dogs, and the belief that cats are low-maintenance pets. These findings can be used by trainers and behaviorists to help educate owners about pet needs, working from the owner’s baseline knowledge and debunking persistent myths.

1. Introduction

In recent decades, there has been an explosion of research into domestic pet species such as cats and dogs, investigating their behavior, preferences, and cognitive skills. Therefore, scientific knowledge of pet dogs and cats is growing rapidly, and several commonly held beliefs have been debunked. For instance, the idea that dog owners need to be the ‘alpha’ to keep their dog under control has not withstood scientific scrutiny [], and neither has the belief that ‘guilty looks’ in dogs reflect feelings of actual guilt about having done something wrong []. In cats, there is no scientific evidence that cats urinate outside of the litterbox out of spite or disrespect; instead, that behavior is typically explained by aspects of the litterbox itself, such as a location that makes the cat feel insecure because it cannot avoid other animals or loud noises []. These beliefs, which are not supported by empirical evidence, could negatively impact the pet–owner relationship if they persist among owners because they erroneously assume that the animal is intentionally attempting to frustrate the owner.
While the aforementioned ideas have clear potential negative implications for pet–owner relationships because they are based on the assumption of intentionality as described above, even more seemingly innocuous ones could also have an indirect impact. For instance, the belief that cats can fall from high places without getting hurt, debunked by Vnuk et al. [], or that they are ‘low-maintenance’ pets, which ignores their complex environmental and behavioral needs [], could give some owners a false sense of security that their cat does not require much attention or care. If a dog owner believes that it is normal for dogs to be aggressive towards cats or strangers, they may not realize that aggressive behavior in dogs can be a symptom of an underlying negative mental and/or physical welfare state [].
Despite the attention that pet animal behavior and welfare has received by the scientific community in recent years, it is unclear whether this knowledge is filtering through to the wider community of pet owners. Recent research in Spain related to myths about dogs found that most participants rejected the claims that small dogs do not need to go outside, and that punishment is a good way to cure dogs of their fears []. However, the majority did agree that dogs need to know who is in charge, which is not accurate [], and that a wagging tail indicates that the dog is happy, which is not always accurate []. In a similar study about cats in a Spanish sample [], just over half of participants agreed with the statement ‘when a cat purrs, that means they’re happy’, which is not always accurate []. Because most of the research into pet dogs and cats has been published in English, it is possible that there are language barriers preventing the flow of information to Spanish speaking laypersons. The current study was therefore adapted from Menor-Campos et al. [] for an English-speaking sample. The aim of this study was to investigate persistent beliefs about dogs and cats among English speakers.

2. Materials and Methods

This project received approval from the La Trobe University Human Ethics Committee (HEC21304).

2.1. Participants

Adult (i.e., at least 18 years old) English speakers living anywhere in the world were eligible to participate in this study. There was no requirement for them to be a current or previous pet owner.

2.2. Measures

2.2.1. Demographics

Participants completed an online survey, first answering demographic questions like gender, year of birth, size of the city they live in, and their level of education. These questions were designed to be appropriate for people from a variety of jurisdictions, to enable future cross-cultural comparisons of the dataset.

2.2.2. Belief Statements

Participants were asked a series of questions probing their level of agreement with various statements about cats and dogs, on a scale from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree). There were 44 items about dogs, and 24 items about cats. Items were generated based on popular beliefs reported in scientific literature, e.g., [,,,,,], as well as questions and comments presented to authors DM-C and SD by clients of their veterinary behaviorist practices.

2.2.3. Information Sheet

After completing the survey, participants were provided with an information sheet describing the existing evidence relating to each item. Items were determined to be likely correct, likely incorrect, or dependent on the circumstances, based on best available evidence about that statement at the beginning of the data collection period in October 2021. A copy of the information sheet is available in Supplementary Materials S1.
The original survey and information sheets were based on Menor-Campos et al. [], and translated from Spanish to English. For the full survey, see Supplementary Materials S2.

2.3. Procedure

Participants were recruited using the snowball technique via social media, whereby the authors promoted the survey on their research group and private social media pages and asked their followers to share the advertisement and link to the survey with others who may be interested. Participants navigated to the survey website, hosted on QuestionPro (QuestionPro Survey Software, Austin, TX, USA, https://www.questionpro.com/, accessed on 26 November 2024)), and completed the survey, which took an average of 11 min per participant. After completing the survey, they were given the information sheet to download. Data were collected between October 2021 and July 2022.

2.4. Analysis

Analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 29.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA) and jamovi 2.3.28 []. All belief statement variables were non-normally distributed. The results presented below are primarily descriptive, including mean, standard deviation, median, minimum, maximum, and percentage of participants who disagreed or agreed with each statement. We also used a t-test to compare men and women on the agreement with beliefs, as t-tests are robust to violations of normality provided the sample size is greater than 30 [], and we correlated year of birth with belief agreement levels using Spearman’s rho.

3. Results

Participants (N = 290) were recruited to complete an online survey. Due to attrition, data from 224 participants were analyzed. Most participants (n = 208; 92.4%) were female, and 15 (6.7%) were male. The average age for participants was 48 years 6 months (Mdn = 46 years; SD = 12 years 9 months), ranging from 24 to 77 years old. Nearly half of participants were from Australia (n = 94; 41.8%), with one-quarter from the United Kingdom (UK; n = 56; 24.9%) and 16.9% (n = 38) from the United States of America (USA). The remainder of participants were spread across 15 other countries with fewer than 10 participants each (e.g., Canada, Netherlands). Nearly all participants (n = 208; 92.5%) reported currently owning a pet, while another 15 (6.7%) had owned a pet in the past. No participants reported never owning a pet.
Participants reported their income relative to other people in their community, and 41.3% (n = 93) reported that it was about the same, while 67 (29.8%) reported that it was somewhat higher, and 48 (21.3%) reported that it was somewhat lower. The size of the city that participants reported living in varied, with 101 participants (44.9%) indicating that their city had between 5000 and 200,000 people. Another 48 (21.3%) lived in a city with more than 1 million people, and 43 (19.1%) lived in a city with 200,000 to 1 million people. Just 31 participants (13.8%) lived in a city with fewer than 5000 people.
Participants were generally highly educated, with 69.3% (n = 156) obtaining a university degree, and 26 respondents (11.6%) having completed part of a degree. Another 25 (11.1%) attended a technical or trade school. When asked whether they have worked with animals as part of their work or study, 38.7% (n = 87) reported that they currently work with animals, while 53 (23.6%) indicated that they had previously worked with animals. Another 82 participants (36.4%) reported never having worked with animals.

3.1. Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 and Table 2 present the descriptive and frequency results of agreement with statements about cats (Table 1) and dogs (Table 2).
Table 1. Level of agreement with different statements about cats, listed in descending order of mean agreement. Sample size (N), mean (M), median (Mdn), standard deviation (SD), minimum and maximum are presented, as well as the % of participants of disagreed (composite of ‘strongly disagree’ and ‘disagree’), neither agreed nor disagreed (neutral), or agreed (composite of ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’). The accuracy of the statement was determined based on available evidence. The item shaded in green is likely accurate. Items in yellow may be accurate in some circumstances, and items in grey are unlikely to be accurate.
Table 2. Level of agreement with different statements about dogs, listed in descending order of mean agreement. All items were presented on a 1–5 scale from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. Sample size (N), mean (M), median (Mdn), standard deviation (SD), minimum and maximum are presented, as well as the % of participants of disagreed (composite of ‘strongly disagree’ and ‘disagree’), neither agreed nor disagreed, or agreed (composite of ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’). Items shaded in yellow may be accurate in some circumstances, and items in grey are unlikely to be accurate. The accuracy of the statement was determined based on available evidence.
In both tables, the statements with the highest level of agreement were typically the ones that were either likely to be accurate (i.e., ‘cats rub against our legs to show affection’) or which were dependent on circumstances. For cats, the two items with relatively high mean agreement which are unlikely to be accurate are ‘cats can see in total darkness’, and ‘cats are low maintenance pets’. For dogs, the statements ‘dogs need to know who’s in charge’ and ‘if you have a dog, you need a garden/yard’ are probably inaccurate but had a relatively high level of agreement. The statements ‘dogs must never bite their owner’ and ‘dogs love being hugged’, whose accuracy would depend on the circumstances, had high levels of agreement.

3.2. Comparison of Beliefs by Demographic Groups

We compared men and women on beliefs about cats and dogs using t-tests. There was only one significant difference for each species. Women (n = 197, M = 2.87, SD = 1.34) were more likely than men (n = 14, M = 2.00, SD = 1.18) to agree that cats can see in total darkness, t(209) = −2.37, p = 0.019. Women (n = 207, M = 2.02, SD = 1.20) were also more likely than men (n = 15, M = 1.47, SD = 0.64) to agree that dogs only see in black and white, t(21.98) = −2.99, p = 0.007, both of which are likely inaccurate.
We used correlations to investigate whether participant age was associated with agreement with any of the belief statements. Significant results for statements about cats and dogs are visible in Table 3. All other correlations were non-significant. For the full table of all correlations, see Supplementary Materials S3.
Table 3. Spearman’s rho and p-values for significant correlations observed between year of birth and agreement with beliefs about cats or dogs. A negative relationship therefore indicates a higher level of agreement among older participants.
All significant correlations had small effect sizes. A younger age was associated with higher agreement with statements about whether it is normal for a dog to be aggressive towards strangers, cats, or other animals, as well as the need for large dogs to have a large home to live in. All these statements are inaccurate.
An older age was associated with greater agreement with statements like ‘cats meow to communicate with each other’, which may be accurate depending on the circumstances, and ‘dogs misbehave to punish their owner’, which is likely inaccurate.

4. Discussion

The aim of this study was to identify the extent to which certain beliefs about cats and dogs persist in the community, among a sample of English speakers. The general findings indicate that, in general, participant beliefs tended to align with the available scientific evidence about the various statements, for both cats and dogs. For cats, the highest mean level of agreement was for the statement ‘cats rub against our legs to show affection’, which is probably accurate []. Most of the other items for cats with relatively high mean agreement were likely accurate in some situations (e.g., ‘when a cat purrs, that means they’re happy’, ‘cats hate water’). No items which are likely to be incorrect had agreement by more than 35% of participants, with the two highest means for inaccurate statements being recorded for ‘cats can see in total darkness’, which is not supported by evidence [], and ‘cats are low-maintenance pets’, which is also incorrect []. The three items with the lowest agreement were ‘black cats bring bad luck’, ‘cats scratch furniture out of disrespect’, and ‘cats urinate outside the litterbox out of disrespect’, all of which are likely to be inaccurate [,,,,]. All three items recorded less than 1% agreement among the sample. These results accord with the previous study in a Spanish sample, in which the highest agreement was for the statement about cats purring from happiness, and similar levels of agreement that cats can see in total darkness [].
There were no belief statements about dogs which were likely to be generally correct, but there were some that are context-dependent, and others that appear to be false. The highest recorded mean was for the statement ‘a dog must never bite their owner’, which is context-dependent, such as when the dog accidentally bites because it is in pain [,]. Nearly 60% of the sample agreed with that statement. The statement with the second highest recorded mean was ‘dogs need to know who’s in charge’. While this statement had the second highest mean agreement, it was nonetheless below the mid-point of 3, and less than half of the sample agreed with the statement. This finding is similar to a Spanish-speaking sample [], in which it was also the statement with the second highest level of agreement. On the other hand, the highest level of agreement among Spanish speaking participants was recorded for ‘if a dog is wagging their tail, that means they’re happy’, which had agreement below the mid-point in the current sample with agreement by just one-third of participants. This statement is probably true in some circumstances, but not all []. The items with the lowest levels of agreement were all likely to be inaccurate. These were: ‘the best way to help a fearful dog is to punish them’, ‘small dogs don’t need to go outside’, and ‘only puppies can learn to love their owner, adult dogs can’t’ [,,,,]. These are also three of the least accepted beliefs among the Spanish sample [].
The statement ‘dogs need to know who’s in charge’ can be construed as being related to the dominance training theory that has not been supported by scientific research []. Nonetheless, it is possible that some participants viewed the statement differently, agreeing that dogs need boundaries, but do not necessarily need to be trained according to a dominance model to achieve those boundaries [,]. Future research should try to flesh out this finding to understand whether people continue to believe that there should be an ‘alpha’ when sharing a home with a dog. Indeed, other items that are arguably related to dominance theory and/or punishment-based training, such as ‘mild physical punishment is an appropriate way to train dogs’, ‘there is nothing wrong with smacking a dog with a rolled-up newspaper’, ‘put your hand in the food bowl to teach your dog not to become possessive of food’, and ‘dogs should eat after we do’, all recorded less than 16% agreement. This aligns with the findings from the Spanish sample [], which found similar trends for these items.
This English adaptation of the two Menor-Campos et al. [,] studies took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, we added two new items to this study that were not in the Spanish study, to probe agreement with the statement, ‘it’s possible to catch COVID-19 from cats/dogs’ (one item per species). There is no evidence that cats or dogs can pass COVID-19 to humans, although transmission in the other direction (i.e., human to pet) has been recorded in some cases []. Mean agreement with this statement for both species was low with about 8% of the sample in agreement, indicating that participants had generally received and accepted that knowledge.
In the current study, there were few gender differences between beliefs, both of which related to cats’ and dogs’ visual abilities. Women were more likely than men to agree that ‘cats can see in total darkness’ and ‘dogs only see in black and white’, both of which are unlikely to be accurate. Based on available evidence, dogs see in color but probably not the way that most humans do [], and cats have better night vision than humans, but probably cannot see in total darkness []. The number of male participants in the sample was very low, so conclusions about gender differences among the general population cannot be drawn from this finding. Gender was not predictive of beliefs in a previous Spanish sample [].
There were some relationships between participant age and agreement with some of the beliefs. Younger participants were more likely to agree that aggression towards strangers, cats, and other animals is normal for dogs, while older people are more likely to agree that dogs misbehave to punish their owner or that dogs’ guilty look represents feelings of actual guilt. It is unclear why these findings would vary by age. In the case of the items related to dominance theory, it is possible that this was the prevailing theory when older people were learning about pet behavior training, so the ideas have ‘stuck’ even as new evidence refutes them. In another human–animal relationship context, the theory of cognitive dissonance was used to explain why dog breeders would continue to support tail docking despite scientific evidence indicating that the practice should be stopped []. The authors argued that breeders were probably experiencing discomfort from cognitive dissonance upon learning that they were causing their dogs unnecessary pain despite their belief that they were ‘good’ breeders. A similar process may be happening here, whereby pet owners do not want to acknowledge that their long-held beliefs and practices may have, in fact, been causing harm to their beloved pets; therefore, they refuse to accept the latest science of animal training. Qualitative research would be useful to help understand this phenomenon in the context of pet animal behavior. Nonetheless, the mean agreements for these statements were low across the board. Indeed, the effect sizes for all significant correlations were small, so it is unlikely that these relationships have any practical impact. These findings were similar to the studies by Menor-Campos et al. [,], which found that young people were generally more likely than older people to agree with erroneous statements about dogs and cats.
This study contributes to the existing scientific literature on human–animal relationships by providing empirical evidence of whether recent scientific understanding of animal behavior has filtered through to the general community. It is important because lack of awareness about animal behavior may lead owners to believe that their pets are ‘misbehaving’ intentionally, even though their behavior may be completely normal for their species (e.g., scratching the furniture; [,]), or at least not designed to deliberately cause frustration. This could result in negative welfare impacts for the animals, especially if the behavior is emerging from a negative state like fear or pain (e.g., fear-based aggression; []). In a more extreme outcome, this misunderstanding can extend to relinquishment to a shelter and subsequent euthanasia [], a situation that is also distressing for owners [,]. With these findings, animal trainers and behaviorists, and veterinarians and veterinary behaviorists, can better understand their clients’ knowledge about their pet cats and dogs, and help educate them on the most important research results that may be impacting their relationship with their pet. They can give their clients practical solutions for their pet’s behavior problems based on the scientific evidence about dog and cat cognitive abilities, behavior, and welfare, all with a better understanding of the owner’s likely baseline knowledge.
The current study has some limitations, including a small number of men, who represent less than 10% of the total sample. Similarly, most participants were from Australia, the UK, and the USA, three countries with similar cultures and a similar demographic makeup. It is unclear whether these results would be relevant in other English-speaking countries with different cultures and demographics, such as Singapore, South Africa, India, or English-speaking South Pacific or Caribbean islands. Future research should aim to obtain sample sizes beyond the WEIRD countries [], to gain a fuller picture of human–animal relationships around the world. We did not collect data on household makeup (e.g., marital status, number of children in the home), but this should be considered in any future studies on this topic, to understand whether these are associated with acceptance of pet animal science. Finally, the sample was highly educated, with 69% of the current sample having a university degree, compared to 33% in Australia as a whole [], 34% in the UK [], and 38% in the USA [], so it is not clear whether these results are generalizable to the wider community. Future research should aim to reach participants with less formal education, to see if they are less likely than highly educated people to accept the science of animal behavior. Similarly, in the information sheet provided to participants after survey completion, explaining the scientific evidence around each statement, we recommend adding a brief explanation of why the relevant citations/references are present, and that this reflects not expert opinions, but empirical evidence.

5. Conclusions

The aim of this study was to identify the beliefs about cats and dogs that persist among pet owners, despite the recent scientific advances in knowledge about cat and dog behavior. The findings indicate that some scientific knowledge is filtering through to the community, but there is still work to do in some aspects of dominance training and understanding cat behavior and welfare needs. The results are in line with previous similar research in a sample of Spanish speakers. Future research should aim for a more diverse sample, especially more men.

Supplementary Materials

The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/pets2010002/s1, S1: Information sheet with latest scientific knowledge of cats and dogs. S2: Full survey. S3: Full correlation table of demographic variables and agreement with items about cats and dogs.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, D.J.M.-C., S.D. and T.J.H.; methodology, D.J.M.-C., S.D. and T.J.H.; software, T.J.H.; validation, T.J.H.; formal analysis, T.J.H.; writing—original draft preparation, T.J.H.; writing—review and editing, T.J.H., D.J.M.-C. and S.D.; project administration, T.J.H., D.J.M.-C. and S.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the La Trobe University Ethics Committee (approval number HEC21304).

Data Availability Statement

Please contact author T.J.H. to access the cleaned, de-identified dataset.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the survey participants for telling us what they believe about cats and dogs. We also appreciate the suggestions made by two anonymous reviewers, whose feedback helped us improve the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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