Parenting styles and choices are known to influence the way that children develop and grow. Researchers are now discovering more about a similar relationship between owners and their pets. How you “parent” your dog has an impact on the kind of dog it grows up to be.
The researchers studied 48 dog owners and their dogs, asking them to complete a pet parenting style survey before joining in three behavioral tests in the lab, assessing attachments and interactions between the dog and their human owners. Then researchers put the dog owners into three categories: authoritative (high expectations, high responsiveness), authoritarian (high expectations, low responsiveness), and permissive (low expectations, high responsiveness). The three behavioral tests covered attachment (how the dog responded to its owner during close interactions), sociability (how the dog responded when a stranger and its owner changed places with one another in the testing room), and problem-solving.
Dogs with authoritative owners had the highest rate of secure attachment and were highly social and sensitive to social context, compared to dogs with authoritarian or permissive owners. What’s more, the only dogs to solve the problem best came from the authoritative group. So researchers came with the conclusion that an owner who’s highly responsive to a dog’s behavior and needs tends to lead to a more social, secure, and smart dog.
The study matches up in some ways with previous research into parents and kids, specifically that children with authoritative parents are more likely to show secure attachment. It is thought to be because of the reliable support they get. “This research shows that the pet dog-human caretaker bond may be functionally and emotionally similar to the bond between a human parent and their child,” says behavioral scientist Lauren Brubaker.
For now, though the study is enough to show that there is some kind of relationship between the approach we take as dog owners and the way that those dogs then behave, even with numerous other factors in play. “We still need to conduct more research in this area,” said the researchers in their published paper.
【小题1】What can we know about the research?| A．A pet parenting style survey was needed. |
| B．The dogs were divided into 3 categories. |
| C．Dog owners were tested for sociability. |
| D．Interactions between the dog owners were assessed. |
| A．The purpose of the research. |
| B．The process of the research. |
| C．The findings of the research. |
| D．The participants of the research. |
| A．parents | B．pet dogs | C．dog owners | D．children |
| A．To introduce some different pet parenting styles. |
| B．To inform readers of a research finding. |
| C．To instruct parents how to parent their kids. |
| D．To persuade dog owners to be authoritative. |
