Apparently, yes. There have been numerous studies done over what was previously thought to be just something people laughed about. I came across a Huffington Post article describing a fascinating experiment done just last year by researcher Nakajima at Japan’s Kwansei Gakuin University. Because of previous studies he did in 2009, he knew that people could match owners to their dogs just by looking at pictures of their faces. He set out to explain why.
In the new experiment, 500 people were shown two sets of photographs, “one set showed pictures of real dog-owner pairs, while the other set had random pairings of people and dogs. The participants were randomly assigned to one of five different ‘masking’ photo conditions, pictured below: no-mask (in which the human’s and the dog’s faces were unobstructed), eye-mask (the human’s eyes were blacked out), mouth-mask (the human’s mouth was blacked out), dog-eye-mask (the dog’s eyes were blacked out), and eye-only (where just the eyes of the human and the dog could be seen).”
80% of the time, people could match the pictures of owners with their dogs just by looking at the faces, 73% of the time when the owners’ mouths were covered. Chance is to blame for about 50% of people that were able to correctly identify the pairs when the eyes of either the owners or the dogs were masked. But when people were shown only the eyes of the person or the dog, they could pair them correctly 74% of the time.
I was skeptical at first, but 74% is a rather large percentage to accurately guess just on eyes alone! I consulted with a few more articles and apparently this phenomenon is due to “familiarity.” We like what we know, and I think I can safely say that most of us know our faces quite well, so if we see a dog that resembles ourselves, we are more likely to adopt that dog. Not surprisingly, it’s been noted that personal characteristics also seem to rub off onto the dog, as well as their dogs temperaments rubbing off onto their owner.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/18/people-look-like-their-dogs-study_n_5838278.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/06/dogs-and-their-owners_n_5051792.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201308/do-dogs-look-their-owners
Guess what? I did a blog post on this particular topic too! So if you want to check it out it’s somewhere on this website. I raised some questions that I’ll share with you so you can think about this study further. I have more than one pet, in fact I have five dogs now. The study says that owners look like their pets, so does this mean I look like all five of my dogs? Surely this is impossible? It would be interesting if someone did a study on this. Good job, and excellent suggestion of blog topic (if I do say so myself).
The familiarity effect you mentioned in how dogs and their owners look alike is also extremely common in couples that have been married a long time. When you spend a lot of time with someone (or your dog) you begin to resemble each other more and more. However in human couple it can also be attributed to chemical changes as we age with our loved ones. You can check it out here: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/old-couples.htm
it seems my link didn’t work here it is again http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/do-you-look-like-your-dog/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
I have always wondered about this! Many times I find myself looking at people and their pets and thinking about how much they look alike. This article was extremely fascinating! I thought there was absolutely no way that the results could be true, but 74% is too large to discount. Reminds me about what we’re learning in class about statistics being significant and whether we should reject or keep the null hypothesis. In this case it seems we would reject the null that humans don’t look like their pets and accept that there actually is some evidence that there is a connection. After reading this post I found another interesting article at
This is really interesting. I, personally, never thought that people looked like their pets. But it is really cool to see that 74% of the group could correctly match people with their pets. I would like to learn how people could match them up, like what triggers to brain to connect to the two. “Ah, yes, this dog and this owner must go together because they both have big noses.” I just think that would be a great follow-up experiment. Great article!
Wow, that’s really cool Lauren! Very smart to have people of generally all the same eye color participate in that experiment to show that it’s not eye color that is setting them apart and allowing the participants to pair the dog with the owner, but these “psychological cues” that people are picking up.
Along the same line, there’s a really cool quiz you can take on how well you can read peoples emotions by just seeing their eyes, check it out!
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/well-quiz-the-mind-behind-the-eyes/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
I do see this and have looked up some information on my own and after reading many articles including http://www.vox.com/2014/8/26/6070957/dogs-look-like-owners-resemble, I see this. People and their dogs always seem to have very special relationships and maybe because you take care of a dog the way you would take care of yourself. Dogs are the family member that no matter what are always there for you and they represent how you should treat yourself and respect yourself.
I never realized that it had been scientifically researched that dogs look like their owners, but I always notice whenever I see a dog walker on the street that a lot of the times dogs do look like their owners! Like in the movie 101 Dalmatians (The original animated version) all the dogs and the people walking around on the street look like each other. I found an article that says not only do dogs and their owners look alike, but people choose the dogs they do because the dog mirrors the persons personality, and vice versa. For example, golden and labrador retrievers are considered “family dogs” because they are the friendliest and most energetic.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2132374/Dog-owners-pick-dogs-act-like-say-researchers.html
I found this article so interesting! It’s crazy to think that a pet you own can look like you! I did not think this could be true at all, but you provided evidence from a couple experiments that showed this correlation between owners and their pets. You’re right! 74% is a high percentage for your eyes to match your pets’ eyes! I hope they conduct more research on this because I think a lot of people will find this topic really fascinating. The article below talks about this existing correlation between the eyes of the owners and their pets and even shows another example. The link below has more pictures of owners and their dogs. Take a look!
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/pets_look_like_their_owners_dog_and_their_people_have_similar_eyes.2.html
http://www.viralnova.com/dog-owners/