I was just going to link to this on Facebook – it seemed cute, until I read the following section:

Your Pet May Predict Your Personality 

The 44-question survey delved into the five dimensions of personality thought to encompass the spectrum of personality types:

• Conscientiousness. Common behaviors include self-discipline, sense of duty, and a tendency toward planned vs. spontaneous behavior. 
• Extraversion. Tendency toward being gregarious, enthusiastic, positive, and energetic. 
• Agreeableness. Includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and sociability. 
• Openness. Includes traits such as appreciation for the arts, curiosity, creativity, and nontraditional thinking and behavior. 
• Neuroticism. Includes characteristics such as being easily stressed, anxious, or easily worried.

"In terms of personalities I would say Woody Allen is at one end of this spectrum and the "Dude" from the Big Lebowski is at the other," Gosling says.

Forty-six percent of those who took the survey identified themselves as dog people, while 12% said they were cat people. Twenty-eight percent said they were both and 15% said they were neither.

Cat People vs. Dog People

According to the findings, self-identified dog people were 15% more extroverted, 13% more agreeable, and 11% more conscientious than cat people.

Cat people were about 12% more neurotic and 11% more open than dog people.

"These are not huge differences," Gosling says. "There are certainly many, many cat people who are extroverts and many, many dog people who aren’t."

Your Pet May Predict Your Personality

Puh-lease. THE five dimensions of personality? I used to joke that “multiple personalities” were classified as a disorder by people who didn’t have one. I’ve always disliked the need people in social sciences feel to pretend they are physicists or mathematicians working with laws and certainties. Come on: 5 dimensions?

For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that 6 billion people fit into 5 boxes – or one box with 5 corners. Is everyone ready to sign-off on these five? Hell, there’s only one negative attribute in the bunch. I wish only one in five people exhibited a negative dimension 20% of the time.

Look at the list again. How is it ordered? Is the “spectrum of personality types” – I like the suggestion that maybe personalities are analog, not digital, but I bet the proponents don’t believe in gradations – between Neuroticism (Woody Allen) to Conscientiousness – not the Dude, man. Does the Dude represent Extraversion or Agreeableness or Openness. Try to arrange those 5 traits in a spectrum. (OK, now I’m playing physicist.)

What about all these very precise – not the same as accurate – percentages? Doesn’t 13% sound more scientific than “a little more than one in ten”? Yeah, precise numbers are the “big boy pants” of the social sciences. Try to reach any conclusion based on the numbers presented.

I won’t blame Gosling for the intellectual sloppiness of the writer and/or editors in using the word “predict” when they mean reveal or indicate. In the end, I’m most irritated by this article and study ignoring one underlying question: Are you drawn to things/people/animals that are like you or to things/people/animals that are unlike you?

If you are open, aren’t you open to a pet that says nothing about your personality? Likewise, if you are agreeable? What’s more neurotic than having a pet that contradicts the predictive powers of one’s pet? Perhaps, only the conscientious take pains to find the right predictive pet.

I’ve had 3 dogs and numerous cats (to which I am allergic – what does that say about my personality, that I choose to live with irritation?). And, given the “spectrum” (hear the sneer) above, by process of elimination, I am neurotic.

Remember: There are 3 kinds of people – those who are good with math and those who are not. Or, there are two kinds of people – those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don’t.