Search Results (2)

Two studies looked at the prevalence and predictors of black cat bias—negative behaviors and attitudes toward black cats—using explicit and implicit measures. The first study looked at an internet sample of 114 people to see if people who self-identified as liking cats (cat people) showed less bias against black cats than those who self-identified as dog people or those who liked both dogs and cats (dog-and-cat people). Participants completed a questionnaire that measured superstitious beliefs, belief in witchcraft, and religiosity before rating pictures and, for about half of the participants, descriptions of black and non-black cats. They rated each cat for how good they thought it was and whether they wanted to live with the cat. Participants also completed a brief implicit association task in which they categorized pictures of black and non-black cats and good and bad words. Results suggest that bias against black cats exists when measured implicitly for dog people and dog-and-cat people but not for cat people. These results suggest that liking cats does not protect one from black cat bias and that liking dogs may lead to black cat bias. Belief in witchcraft was positively correlated with the explicit measure of black cat bias for dog people (medium effect size). In study two, a sample of 37 college students, mostly self-identified as dog people, completed this study twice—once at least six weeks before and once no more than three weeks before Halloween. The implicit measure of black cat bias was about 40% larger when measured closer to Halloween. These results suggest that black cat bias might be modified by environmental factors. Full article

Some nonhuman animal shelters have developed rehoming programs for black cats to remedy what they believe are their higher rates of euthanasia and lower rates of adoption. This study reviews humans’ preferences/aversions to cats of various coat colors and uses contingency tables and multinomial logistic regression to test possible differences in outcomes (euthanasia, adoption, or transfer) for 7983 cats that entered an urban public shelter in Kentucky, USA from 2010 through 2011. While coat color overall was negligibly associated with cat outcomes in a contingency table, the pairwise difference between black and white cats was significant (p < 0.05) and nontrivial in strength. Specifically, black cats experienced the highest euthanasia and lowest adoption rates, while white cats had the lowest euthanasia and highest adoption rates. Brown, gray, and orange cats experienced similar outcomes, but middling between those of black and white cats. These patterns by color remained weak but significant after controlling for breed and stray status in regression analysis, with the exception of orange and white, which did not differ significantly. A subsample of 1219 entirely black cats was analyzed to assess whether they had different outcomes during the run-up to Halloween; their October percentages of adoption and transfer were comparable to or lower than all other months of the calendar year. Thus, this study did not find that outcomes improved for black cats during October. Overall, this study provides weak support for what has been termed “Black Cat Bias” by others, and hints that black cats in public shelters should receive extra consideration for rehoming, particularly if such efforts do not substantially redirect resources from other initiatives. Full article