Emily Chan
Have you ever gone to a dog park and noticed that a lot of dogs there actually look a great deal like their owners?
The phenomenon may not apply to every dog and owner out there, but research has shown that there is some truth behind dogs looking like their owners. But what is responsible for the resemblance?
One of the first psychologists to test the idea was Michael Roy from the University of California, San Diego. He went to three dog parks in the area and took photographs of the dogs and owners separately.
Then, he asked a group of participants to match up the pairs. They were able to figure out which dog belonged to which owner with “reasonable accuracy.”
Since then, similar studies have been repeated multiple times, particularly by Dr. Sadahiko Nakajima at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. In 2009, Dr. Nakajima published a study in which he used photographs of humans and their pooches.
He asked undergraduate students to match the people and dogs up from the pictures, which were in random order. The results revealed that the students correctly guessed the pup and its owner at levels significantly above random chance. In addition, they showed that people are using physical appearance to make these judgments.
Next, Dr. Nakajima wanted to figure out why dogs looked so much like their owners. How did people choose dogs that resembled them so closely? In another study from 2013, he covered up certain facial features in the photos, such as the eyes and mouth. He asked students to match the dogs and owners again.
The rate at which the students were able to correctly identify the pup and owner dropped considerably when the eyes in the photos were obstructed. The finding demonstrates that the eyes are the most important facial feature that links humans and dogs together, over qualities such as size and hairstyle.
The reason why some dogs look like their owners may be due to the “mere exposure effect,” which is the idea that humans prefer things that are familiar to them.
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