Attitude toward brachycephalic dogs is influenced by age, sex, parenthood, education, and personality but not by eye-contact preference or health-awareness

Abstract

Brachycephalic (“flat-faced”) dogs are popular despite their health problems. We assumed that people who like brachycephalic dogs have lower knowledge about the associated health problems; they have a specific personality profile and highly value these dogs’ tendencies to form eye contact with humans. We applied an online survey (N = 1156 respondents) and found that, in contrast to our expectations, people with a positive attitude toward brachycephalism associated more health problems with it and did not prefer photos of dogs looking into the camera (“forming eye-contact”) over dogs looking away. In addition, they were more often younger, were women, had children, were less educated, and had a higher level of agreeableness and dog-directed emotional empathy. The results suggest that brachycephalic dogs’ tendency to form eye contact does not contribute to their popularity, and neither high emotional empathy nor knowledge about health problems deters people from liking these dogs. Future research should examine how dog behaviours other than forming eye-contact maintain the popularity of flat-faced dogs and how owners’ sensitivity to fashion trends as well as not recognizing that a dog is suffering from health issues, contribute.