Cat Breeds and Their Personalities, According to Research

psychology today ^ | 06/17/2020 | Karen Wu Ph.D.

[BenLurkin]

Does nurture or nature matter more when it comes to a cat’s personality? While many people claim that cat breeds differ in personality, there has been little research in the area. Salonen, Vapalahti, Tiira, Maki-Tanila, and Lohi (2019) thus set forth to examine the behaviors of different cat breeds as well as the heritability of their behaviors — that is, the extent to which variation in behaviors are due to genetic variations in the population.

Salonen et al. (2019) surveyed Finnish cat owners on their cats’ behaviors, which included “tendency to seek human contact," “aggressiveness towards human family members, strangers, or other cats," and “shyness towards strangers or novel stimuli." In total, 5,726 cats were studied. The researchers then separated these cats into 19 breeds. The researchers controlled for environmental factors including “weaning age, access to outdoors, presence of other cats,” and general characteristics (sex, age of cat) in their analyses. They identified the breeds corresponding with the 10 following behavioral traits:

[Exit148]

Awwwwwww— look at those hearts!! What is kitty’s name?

[Daffynition]

It’s a pic I found in my travels on the ‘net. It could be a clever photoshop, for all I know. It’s almost to purrfect to be true. :)

[Bethaneidh]

Hahahahahaha.