By Carolyn A. (Cary) Neeper, Ph. DFirst the good news: no difference in personality could be found in a study of indoor and outdoor cats. At least, not in Australia. More studies are scheduled to be done on American cats by the Cat Teacher Program run by North Carolina’s State University and Museum of Natural Science.
An article in the News Observer May 17, 2016 reported that 2,800 Australian and New Zealand cats have “…five broad feline personality dimensions,” three of which “…correspond to those in humans.” The cats were rated one to seven on 52 behaviors and traits.
Not surprisingly, cats share three of humans’ “Big Five” personality traits: extroversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Guess which three.
Descriptive words for the “Feline Five” are “anxious and fearful, curious and active, bullying and aggressive, impulsive and erratic, and affectionate.”
Does anxious and fearful mean neuroticism? Does being curious and active mean being open to experience? Do cats not do bullying and aggression? Conscientiousness? Maybe agreeableness is the cats’ affectionate behavior?
Are the traits shared skittishness (neuroticism), outgoingness (extraversion), and friendliness (agreeableness)? Hmmm. Does that mean that dominance (aggression or bullying) and spontaneity (impulsive and erratic) are not generally found in cats?
This domestic cat study found no difference between Australian and New Zealand cats and no difference between genders. Most of them were rated in the middle of each trait.
Given the humans I know, I have a hard them matching the Big Human Five with three of the “Feline Five.” But, then, I’m no psychologist, and it’s been a long time since Oscar, our outdoor farm cat, shared our family life. Perhaps behavior in humans and cats varies too much in individuals to fall cleanly into patterns described with one word.