Can Cats Be Psychopaths?

Source: Sebastian Ocklenburg

What do you imagine if you hear the word “psychopath”? Chances are that associations that come to mind are things like “violent,” “criminal,” “cold-blooded,” or “serial killer.” Most people will imagine a human when thinking about a psychopath and almost all psychological research on psychopathy focused on humans.

This leaves open an important question: Can animals be psychopaths, too?

A new study, now published in the Journal of Research in Personality, was focused on answering this question for cats (Evans et al., 2021).

A Model for Psychopathy

As a starting to characterize psychopathy in cats, researcher Rebecca Evans from the University of Liverpool in the UK and her team used a popular model of psychopathy in humans: the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy by Patrick et al. (2009).

The model assumes that psychopaths are characterized by three main factors:

1. Boldness. Psychopaths are often immune to stress and show low levels of fear in situations that other people would find very frightening. Unlike other people, psychopaths do not avoid such frightening situations.
2. Disinhibition. Psychopaths are unable to control their emotions and their urges like other people do and are more likely to act on their impulses even if they are socially unacceptable
3. Meanness. Psychopaths do not feel empathy when other people are sad or in pain and they have no problems hurting other people in cold blood to reach their goals.

Investigating Psychopathy in Cats

The study had three parts. In the first part, the researchers designed a questionnaire for cat owners based on the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy. In the second part, they gave this questionnaire to 1,496 cat owners together with two other questionnaires, one about the personality of the cat and one about the quality of the relationship between cat and owner. In the third part, 30 cat owners filled out the questionnaire and the associations between the results of the questionnaire and the daily activities of the cat were assessed.

The results of the study showed that the three aspects of psychopathy in humans suggested in the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy can be applied to cats, too. Cats can show boldness (e.g. climbing very high on trees or houses without showing any fear), disinhibition (not obeying commands such as not jumping on the table and eating their owners' food when told to stay on the ground), and meanness (unprovoked aggression against the owner, or other animals).

Interestingly, cats showed two additional dimensions of psychopathy that were not observed in humans: pet-unfriendliness, and human-unfriendliness.

This reflects that some cats can be aggressive towards pets such as other cats and dogs while being friendly with their owners, while other cats are not showing any aggression towards other pets but are aggressive towards their owners (e.g., scratching or biting them).

Importantly, the research showed that not all aspects of psychopathy in cats were negative for the cat-owner relationship. Meanness (e.g., being aggressive towards the owner) and boldness (e.g., showing dangerous behavior like climbing on a tall tree) predicted a lower satisfaction of the owner with their relationship with their cat. In contrast, pet-unfriendliness and disinhibition predicted a higher satisfaction of the owner with their relationship with their cat.

Thus, some owners actually interpreted behaviors associated with these aspects of psychopathy as positive. This makes sense as they may be related to the cat seeking closeness to their owner. For example, if a cat shows signs of disinhibition by jumping on the table during dinner, some owners may find that cute. Also, pet-unfriendliness may be related to spending less time with other animals and more time with the owner, which may be perceived as positive.

Taken together, the study by Evans et al. (2021) suggests that psychopathy in cats exists and that it has more factors than in humans—important knowledge for cat owners and veterinarians alike.

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