Does owning a dog make you sexier? Apparently so!
Attention dog-loving singles! A new study has confirmed what so many dog park visits and “yappy hours” and gimmicky Instagram accounts have already made so obvious: Your furry friend can help get you lucky.
But there is, of course, a caveat: using Fido as date-bait is far more effective if you happen to be a single guy. (Sigh. Even dog ownership isn’t exempt from male privilege.)
The study, titled 'The Roles of Pet Dogs and Cats in Human Courtship and Dating' and published this month in the quarterly research journal Anthrozoos, surveyed random Match.com users in the United States who included pet info in their dating profiles. Of the 1,210 people who responded, 61 percent were women — and dogs and cats were by far the most common pets listed. (Still no word from science on the impact of exotic pets on one’s dating life; though I do know a guy who made his future wife choose between him and her parrot after the bird repeatedly tried to bite his face.)
The study’s researchers theorised that “women will place more value on how a potential mate interacts with their pet than will single men” — and the results proved them right: The ladies were more than twice as likely as the gents to say that they were attracted to someone because he had a pet, and also about twice as likely to judge their date based on how they reacted to a furry companion.
(Sorry, cat-lovers. Dogs are more commonly used as social barometers in the dating scene — about 32 percent of the 20-something women surveyed said that a guy with a feline friend was a potential deal-breaker.)
So why are women more likely to swoon over a partner with a dog? “Put in terms of evolutionary and life history theory, females allocate a higher proportion of their reproductive effort to parenting while males expend more energy on mating,” the researchers said. Basically: Women are more likely to want a guy who seems like he would be a responsible, caring parent; guys are more likely to want a girl who seems like she would look good in a bikini.
The study (which has some notable limitations — the survey sample comes exclusively from the online dating pool, and includes only heterosexual, gender-normative people) pointed out that because pets are increasingly treated like members of the family, their role as a stand-in for potential future kids is all the more significant.
Men are onto this tactic, too. Guys were more than twice as likely to admit that they’ve used a pet to lure a potential date, the study said — and dogs were used far more than cats as this sort of “social tool.”
While we endorse all forms of pet ownership, we do insist that pets are obtained for the right reasons and that responsible pet ownership is at the forefront of everybodys mind before embarking on getting a cat or dog.
The details of the study can be found here for those of you interested in finding out more.
First published in The Washington Post.