Are Cats More Socially Inept Than Dogs?

During the past few days, I've received a number of emails about an essay by Live Science writer Yasemin Saplakoglu called "Cats are too socially inept to be loyal." For headline readers who don't go on to read much more—and sadly there are far too many for whatever reasons—one could easily draw the conclusion that cats are socially inept and disloyal and that research has actually shown this to be true. This would be a huge mistake and here's why, as Ms. Saplakoglu notes in her piece about a research paper published in Animal Behavior and Cognition titled "Cats (Felis catus) Show no Avoidance of People who Behave Negatively to their Owner."

In this study, 36 domestic cats (18 females and 18 males, 13 of whom were house cats and 23 who lived around five cat cafés) and their humans were studied. The clever experimental setup (Figure 1) involved creating a situation in which the cats watched their human try to open a container and remove an object. The humans couldn't do it successfully and the cats observed two situations, one of which involved a human helper coming to the aid of the cats' humans and the other when the other human didn't help and turned away. At the end of the experiment, cats were offered a piece of food and they didn't show any preference for the "friend" who helped their human when compared with the person who didn't.

Figure 1: (a) Owner tries unsuccessfully to open the container to remove an object inside. (b) Owner asks Actor for help. (c) In the Helper condition, Actor helps Owner. (d) Owner successfully opens the container and shows the object to the cat. (e) In the Non- helper condition, Actor refuses to help; turns away. (f) Owner continues trying to open the container but fails. (g) In both conditions, the cats could take food from either Actor or Neutral person.

Source: "Cats (Felis catus) Show no Avoidance of People who Behave Negatively to their Owner," open access.

Summarizing this study, Ms. Saplakoglu writes, "The cats did not care who they took the food from. Previously, the research team showed that dogs undergoing the same experiment avoided people who refused to help their owners." One aspect of this study was to compare cats with dogs. She also asks, "So does this mean dogs are loyal and cats are selfish?" and answers, "Not quite. 'It is conceivable that the cats in this study did not understand the meaning or goal of the owners' behavior," the authors wrote. No studies have investigated if cats can recognize others' goals or intentions from their actions, they wrote. 'But even if they did understand the owner's goal or intention, they might have failed to detect the negative intention of the non-helpful actor.'"

The researchers also note, "About two-thirds of our subjects were from cat cafés, which makes us cautious about generalizing the results of this study to all domestic cats," the result of which "Café cats, for example, may spend more time socializing with strangers and may have less individual interactions with their owners than house cats would..." There also are some suggestions that it's not surprising that cats and dogs would, or might, differ on different measures of attachment and sociality, because of different paths of domestication from different ancestors.

What can we conclude from this study?

There is a disconnect between the title and text of Ms. Saplakoglu's piece that needs to be parsed, because the title suggests that cats, in fact, are too socially inept to be loyal. (I fully realize that she might not have chosen this title.) Even the researchers express caution about drawing this conclusion. Furthermore, because of large within species (infraspecific) differences, just as there is no "the dog" or universal dog, there is no "the cat" or universal cat. And, both cats and dogs can be tightly and emotionally bonded to their and other humans, with shared emotions serving as "social glue." Indeed, many cats are loving and highly social beings.

The bottom line is some cats may be less socially aware than some dogs, and some cats may be more socially aware than some dogs, and it would be good to know why this is so. Sweeping generalizations don't work.

It's also not asking too much for popular media to be more careful in their choice of headlines. The same problems arise when people try to make comparisons between cats and dogs and who's smarter than whom. In an essay called "Ha-ha, sourpuss. Cats have 9 lives but dogs have the sense of humour" we read, for example, "Dogs are not just brighter than cats but may also have evolved a sense of humour, say researchers who have compared the brains and behaviour of the two species." These are unfounded claims.

Ecological validity: Are cats less likely to help one another than dogs?

In "Cats (Felis catus) Show no Avoidance of People who Behave Negatively to their Owner," the researchers also call for more "ecologically valid" studies. They write, "...further work on cats’ social evaluation capacities needs to consider ecological validity, notably with regard to the species’ sociality."

I couldn't agree more and have recently written about the importance of conducting ecologically valid (or reliable) studies that reflect who cats, dogs, and other animals truly are and also for making studies of animal behavior more reliable, which involves paying close attention to individual differences within and between species. An ecologically relevant question for which we know nothing is, "Are cats less likely to help one another than dogs?"

I look forward to future studies and discussions of the rich and deep cognitive and emotional lives of cats, dogs, and other nonhumans. There still is much to learn and these data are essential for making useful and meaningful comparisons.