“Cat Owners’ Anthropomorphic Perceptions of Feline Emotions and Interpretation of Photographs”, E. M. C. Bouma, M. L. Reijgwart, P. Martens, A. Dijkstra2024 (cat psychology)⁠:

Background: Many cat owners describe the relationship with their cat in anthropomorphic terms like child or best friend. Attributing such human social roles to cats might influence the interpretation of cat behavior and communicative cues.

Method: Over 1,800 Dutch cat owners filled out an online survey concerning the relationship with, and behavior of, their own cat and beliefs about the emotional lives of cats in general. Owners were also presented with 7 photographs of cats (four with reliable cues to identify an emotion and 3 neutral ones).

Results: 52% of the respondents described the relationship with their cat in human terms such as family member (52%), as a child (27%) or as best friend (6%) while 14% described their cat as a pet animal. Owners who described the relationship with their cat in human terms, more often (1) assigned complex social emotions (such as jealousy and compassion) to cats and (2) assigned emotions to neutral photographs.

Owners with a realistic perception of cat emotions were better at correctly identifying the emotional photographs. Moreover, owners that attributed complex social emotions to cats in general had a higher tendency to attribute emotions to the neutral photographs.

Conclusion: Our study shows that the correct interpretation of feline emotional cues from photographs are negatively associated with owners’ anthropomorphic perception of cats. This study highlights the importance of educating owners about natural cat behavior and realistic views of the emotional life of (their) cats.

[Keywords: cats, emotions, anthropomorphizing, social role]

…Despite the absence of scientific evidence, many cat owners believe their cats are able to experience complex social emotions such as jealousy, revenge and remorse (Morris et al 2008_16ya, Arahori et al 2017, Pickersgill et al 2023). This tendency to anthropomorphize companion animals is likely a consequence of the important social role cats play for their owners. This social importance is reflected in the anthropomorphic ways owners describe the relationship with their cats, such as family, best friend or child (eg. Bouma et al 2022, Arahori et al 2017, Martens et al 2016). For example, Arahori et al 2017 showed that owners who see their cat as a family member more often attribute compassion to their cat than owners who see their cat as a ‘pet’. The social needs of cat owners are also related to the interpretation of the behavior of cats and owners have a tendency to project their own emotional experiences onto their companion cats (Pongrácz & Szapu2018). For example, Martens et al 2016 showed that owners who are highly attached to their cats more often attributed the emotions of joy, sadness, surprise, shame, disappointment, and compassion to their cats.

Unrealistic beliefs about the emotional life of cats might be related to incorrect interpretation of behavior, posture and vocalizations, which in turn can pose risks for feline welfare. We previously showed that the living environment of cats differed depending on the way the owners perceived their cat (Bouma et al 2022). For example, owners who perceive their cats as children displayed more protective behaviors (eg. less outdoor access, less care by others) compared to owners who perceive their cat as pet animal, which might not be in line with the behavioral needs of the cat.

…To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study (n = 1,800) asking cat owners to interpret photographs of cats. Our results show that owners are very like-minded and correct in the interpretation of some photographs (eg. fear), while their opinions differed greatly for others (eg. offensive aggression/frustration/irritation and defensive aggression), indicating that these emotions were more difficult to recognize. Fear-aggression was often ‘recognized’ as anger instead of fear, while flattened ears and dilated pupils are clear indications of fear and not aggression (Finka et al 2014, Ellis2018, Nicholson & O’Carroll2021). Possibly, the open mouth of the cat has confused the respondents, as it is not clear from the photograph whether the cat is hissing (fearful) or growling (aggressive). The visible teeth might be interpreted as aggressive by owners.

The photograph with the authors’ cat displaying ‘positive affect in response to seeing the owner’ resulted in the most varied responses of the 4 emotional photographs. A relatively large proportion even selected negative emotions such as anger or frustration. This might again be related to the cats’ open mouth or to lack of knowledge about positive body postures such as the tail-up.

See Also:

• Humans can identify cats’ affective states from subtle facial expressions

• Feline faces: Unraveling the social function of domestic cat facial signals

• A Comparative Study of the Use of Visual Communicative Signals in Interactions Between Dogs (Canis familiaris) and Humans and Cats (Felis catus) and Humans

• Attachment bonds between domestic cats and humans

• The Relationship Between Neuroticism Facets, Conscientiousness, and Human Attachment to Pet Cats

• Human Perceptions of Coat Color as an Indicator of Domestic Cat Personality

• Black Cat Bias: Prevalence and Predictors

• Responses of cats to petting by humans