People rated cats as having a more positive emotional state when shown indoors rather than outdoors, even those who believe cats should roam freely outside, a new study found.
The study also found that other contextual factors, such as the color of cats' coats and a person's own emotional state, impacted human perception of cat emotion.
"Our research shows that even subtle environmental cues can shape how people interpret cat emotions," said Monique Udell, a professor at Oregon State University and lead author of the study. "Understanding these perceptions is important to human-cat interactions and the welfare of cats."
The study, published in Anthrozoös, provides compelling evidence that human perception of cat emotion can be directly influenced by context. The finding mirrors a recent study with dogs that demonstrated that context significantly influences how people interpret dog emotions.
For the cat study, the researchers showed images of 12 individual cats with AI-generated backgrounds of indoor and outdoor settings to 665 participants. Participants varied in age, but 63% were in the 25-34 range and 71% identified as female.
Fifty-eight percent of the participants believed cats should not be allowed to roam freely outdoors and 42% said they should be able to go outdoors freely. Sixty-nine percent had owned a cat and 31% had never owned a cat.
Each participant saw 24 cat images and was asked to rate the cat's emotional state and their own emotional response to the image.
Findings included:
- Indoor backgrounds led to higher ratings of positive emotion in cats.
- Outdoor settings were associated with higher arousal in cats.
- Participants who believe cats should be allowed outdoors and those that believe they should not be allowed outdoors both perceived cats as having higher positive emotions when pictured indoors.
- Participants' own emotional state strongly correlated with how they rated the cat's emotion. For example, individuals who reported feeling positive emotions when viewing an image of a particular cat also reported believing that the same cat was experiencing positive emotions when viewing that same image at another time.
- Participants reported believing that black cats represented in the images were experiencing more positive emotions overall than tabby or orange cats, challenging long-held stereotypes
The study's insights have important implications for animal welfare, the researchers said, because human beliefs about cat emotions and well-being can influence the management and care of cats.
"At the end of the day, our perceptions about what cats are communicating to us influence how we care for them," said Udell, director of the Human-Animal Interaction Lab at Oregon State. "Challenges associated with interpreting and managing cat behavior within homes can lead to frustration, missed health problems, and is a leading cause of cats ending up in shelters. Consequently, how humans perceive the needs, behavior and emotional state of cats is critically important to cat welfare and human-cat relationships."
The research could be used for educational training to help cat owners interpret and respond to their cats' behavioral cues or emotional state more accurately and to better inform how to represent animals in images. For example, an image of an adoptable cat pictured on an indoor background could result in more positive emotions and higher likelihood of adoption compared to an image of the same cat taken outdoors.
Co-authors of the paper are Amanda Puitiza, S. Darling and Delaney Frank of Oregon State's Department of Animal and Rangeland Sciences in the College of Agricultural Sciences; Holly Molinaro, Arizona State University; and Kristyn Vitale, Unity Environmental University.
