Preliminary analysis of an adjective-based dog personality questionnaire developed to measure some aspects of personality in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris)

Mirkó, Erika; Kubinyi, Enikő; Gácsi, Márta; Miklósi, Ádám

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2012.02.016

Cited by 55 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…On the basis of the questionnaire Mirkó et al (2012) established four personality factors which included the following adjectives; Stranger-directed Sociability: brave, not afraid of noises, not mistrustful, initiative; Activity: not lazy, likes fetching balls, likes games of fight, overactive; Aggressiveness: likely to bite a human, jealous of dogs, hysterical, shows a tendency to bark, retaliative; Trainability: learns things easily, likes pleasing the owner, controllable, not disorganised. Statistical analysis showed good internal and external consistency of these factors and correlation analysis confirmed that they were unrelated dimensions of dog personality (Mirkó et al, 2012).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Collecting ratings by means of the questionnaire Before the behaviour test, each owner was asked to fill in the Dog Personality Questionnaire (DPQ) (see Mirkó et al, 2012). On the basis of the questionnaire Mirkó et al (2012) established four personality factors which included the following adjectives; Stranger-directed Sociability: brave, not afraid of noises, not mistrustful, initiative; Activity: not lazy, likes fetching balls, likes games of fight, overactive; Aggressiveness: likely to bite a human, jealous of dogs, hysterical, shows a tendency to bark, retaliative; Trainability: learns things easily, likes pleasing the owner, controllable, not disorganised.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We collected 100 dogs, carried out the FIDO Personality test (Brúder et al, submitted) with all of them and asked the owners to fill in our Dog Personality Questionnaire (Mirkó et al, 2012). In this way we obtained both the video recordings of the test battery and the completed questionnaires of the 100 dogs.…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The lack of association could be due to the fact that the visual stimulus the umbrella provided was far more dominant than the loudness of the noise the opening umbrella made. In the DPQ (Mirkó et al, 2012) 'brave' was defined as 'He/She does not get frightened easily by different objects, animals or humans, is confident even in new environments.' This may explain why there was a lack of association.…”

Section: Association Between Owners' Subjective Rating and Behaviour mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The four factors established by Mirkó et al (2012) were examined one by one according to the predicted associations described above.…”

Section: The Association Between the Owners' Subjective Rating And Bementioning

confidence: 99%

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Association between subjective rating and behaviour coding and the role of experience in making video assessments on the personality of the domestic dog (Canis familiaris)

Mirkó

Dóka

Miklósi

2013

Applied Animal Behaviour Science

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In this paper our first aim was to investigate association between behaviour coding based on a test battery called the FIDO Personality test for dogs (Canis familiaris) and a subjective rating given by dog owners. For the latter we asked dog owners to fill in the Dog Personality Questionnaire (DPQ) which established four personality traits for dogs: Strangerdirected Sociability, Activity, Aggressiveness and Trainability. The FIDO Personality test consists of a series of subtests in which we utilised an ethogram and measured different aspects of dog behaviour. Prior to this study we established a set of possible associations between the behavioural and the questionnaire variables.With regard to Trainability no correlation could be detected between any of the questionnaire variables and the hypothetically corresponding test battery variables. In the case of Stranger-directed Sociability, we revealed correlation between owners' reports and the dogs' behaviour during the test stuation. Those dogs which were reported 'initiative' and 'not mistrustful with unfamiliar humans' approached the experimenter with shorter latency (r = -0.25, p < 0.01; r = 0.24, p < 0.01) and played more with her than those who were scored lower on these questionnaire items (r = -0.27, p < 0.01). For the factor Activity, no correlation was found between the owners' report and the behaviour of dogs displayed in the Spontaneous activity phase of the test battery. Association was revealed between the owners' report regarding the dogs' preference for ball games and playing and their behaviour in the corresponding subtest. Those dogs which were reported to like ball games and like playing with the owner played with the ball as well as with a tug more in the test situation than those which were scored lower on the questionnaire variable 'likes fetching balls'(r = 0.47, p < 0.001; r = 0.25, p < 0.01). As regards the factor Aggressiveness, the questionnaire variable 'shows a tendency to bark' correlated with the dogs' aggressive reactions (growl, bite, attack) (r = 0.25, p < 0.01) in the Bone take-away subtest and with the 'latency of getting the DNA sample' (r = 0.30, p < 0.001) in the Getting DNA sample subtest. The results show that despite of the investigated associations there is a need for more effort to refine both questionnaire-based and behaviour-based assessment of dog personality.The second aim of our experiments was to reveal whether owner ratings on the above personality factors converged with the ratings of independent groups of observers based on the video recordings of the FIDO Personality test. First, in the case of each factor, we compared the degrees of ratings given by the owners and by the three rater groups with different levels of hands-on experience with dogs. We found no difference in the case of Stranger-directed Sociability, Activity and Trainability (F(3,128)=1.17, p=0.17; F(3,128)=0.99, p=0.4; F(3,128)=1.6, p=0.18 respectively) but there was a significant variability in judging Aggressiveness (F(3,128)=2.86, p=0...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Association Between Owners' Subjective Rating and Behaviour mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The four factors established by Mirkó et al (2012) were examined one by one according to the predicted associations described above.…”

Section: The Association Between the Owners' Subjective Rating And Bementioning

confidence: 99%