Pets and Politics: Do Liberals and Conservatives Differ in Their Preferences for Cats Versus Dogs?

Pets and Politics: Do Liberals and Conservatives Differ in Their Preferences for Cats Versus Dogs? Chantelle Ivanski, Ronda F. Lo, Raymond A. Mar. Collabra: Psychology (2021) 7 (1): 28391. Nov 10 2021. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.28391

Abstract: Liberals and conservatives are perceived to disagree on most aspects of life, even seemingly trivial things like pet choice. Although the question of whether liberals and conservatives differ in their liking for cats and dogs has been sporadically investigated, few peer-reviewed reports exist, results are mixed, and most reports examine this topic indirectly. In this registered report we employed a large existing dataset to examine whether political identity predicts liking of cats and dogs, and a preference for one over the other. Self-reported political identity was used to predict explicit evaluations of both pets, in addition to performance on an Implicit Association Test (IAT) measuring pet preference. Greater conservativism predicted more negative evaluations of cats and an overall preference for dogs over cats, even after controlling for relevant demographics.

Keywords:political identity, individual differences, cats and dogs, pet preference

Discussion

In line with our hypotheses, conservativism is related to an overall preference for dogs over cats. Further, consistent with our overall reasoning (though not explicitly hypothesized), conservativism is also related to a negative evaluation of cats. These relationships remain even after controlling for relevant demographic information (i.e., age, gender, income, and ethnicity). Although people across the political spectrum show a greater liking for dogs overall (see Table 3), those who tend to be more conservative show less of an explicit liking for cats and have a stronger liking for dogs relative to cats. A similar pattern of results was seen with the results of the IAT score, with conservatives having a more positive implicit evaluation of dogs relative to cats. Our mediation analysis found evidence that RWA mediated the relationship between political identity and cat evaluations, and the relationship between political identity and a preference for dogs over cats (no mediation was observed for evaluations of dogs). But Openness to Experience and SDO did not mediate any of the relationships between political identity and pet preferences. Importantly, however, the magnitude of these effects was small, with a one unit change in political identity (on a 7-point scale) predicting about a 1% to 2% change in pet evaluations and preferences. This is to be expected, as pet preference is likely a rather distal reflection of other, more specific, traits that are captured indirectly by political identity.

The question of whether pet preferences coincide with differences in political identity continues to attract great public interest. In fact, after the 2020 federal election in the US, articles were written about how then-president-elect Biden was hoping to unite the country and “[bridge] the chasm between the nation’s cat people and dog lovers” by adopting a cat in addition to bringing his two dogs when moving into the White House (Luscombe, 2020). Though primarily meant to amuse, this anecdote does illustrate how the divide between cat and dog people is often associated with political divides. Our study provides the first direct and preregistered evidence that political identity is indeed associated with pet preferences, with respect to cats and dogs.

Our results are also consistent with much of the extant research on this topic. Cat ownership is higher in more liberal states (Bratskeir, 2016) and voting for McCain in 2008 (the conservative candidate) was related to state-level ownership of dogs, fish, horses, ferrets, and rodents, but not cats (Mutz, 2010). Interestingly, however, past findings associating liberalism with a liking for cats deviates from our own examination of state-level data, which found that cat ownership was not statistically significantly associated with voting for Trump.

Although the current research demonstrates that political identity predicts cat and dog preferences, the goal of this work is not to increase the already large divide between political partisans. In fact, pets may actually help bring together people of different political stripes. In a 2020 survey of cat and dog owners, for example, 64% of respondents reported that they would be more likely to talk to a person from a different political party if the person had a pet (Banfield Pet Hospital, 2020). In addition, knowing the other person has a pet had helped 45% of participants end an argument with those with differing political opinions (Banfield Pet Hospital, 2020).

Limitations and future directions

The main limitation of the present study was the large amount of missing data, an unavoidable outcome of the study design over which we had no control. Because our analyses were preregistered before we had an opportunity to see the actual data, we did not know how many participants completed each component until after pre-registration. As a result, some of the analyses we pre-registered proved to be too underpowered to be reliable (i.e., exploration of potential mediators and extreme scores). This is indeed unfortunate, as these analyses would have helped us to answer many interesting questions. Future research remains necessary to examine whether certain traits mediate the relationship between political identity and pet ownership. A second limitation is the measure of political identity employed in these archival data, which was a single item. Employing several items can help reduce measurement error and also allow for a greater breadth of construct coverage. Thus, studies designed to examine this question should include more items to measure political identity. Finally, the current study employed a cross-sectional design, making it difficult to make causal claims about the nature of this relationship between political identity and pet preferences.