If you pay enough attention when you walk the streets or in public parks, over time you will realize that some dogs mysteriously resemble their ownersIn many cases and strangely, pets can be so similar that they look like miniature clones.
It's not a rule, but often, in a way, people eventually end up looking like their pets or vice versa. In fact, in some parts of the world contests are held to see which owner is most like their dog. There is some science that supports this popular idea. On our site we have researched the subject and we were not surprised to find some information about this myth that is no longer a myth, and we reveal the unknown. Is it true that dogs look like their owners? Keep reading!
A tendency to the familiar
What makes people relate and then select a dog as a pet is not so much on a conscious level. The person does not say, "This dog looks like me or will look like me in a few years." However, in some cases, people may experience what psychologists call " the mere exposure effect".
There is a psychological-cerebral mechanism that explains this phenomenon and, although it is subtle, it is quite marked and in many cases it is obvious. The response to the event has to do with the word "familiarity", everything that is familiar to us will pass first time because it has a charge of positive feeling around it. the.
We see ourselves in the mirror, in certain reflections and in photos every day and, at an unconscious level, the general characteristics of our own face seem too familiar to us. Science therefore suggests that, as is the case with everything else we have seen many times, we should be very fond of our face. Well, dogs that look like their owners are part of that mirror effect. The dog ends up being a kind of reflective surface of its human companion, our pet reminds us of our face and this is a pleasant feeling that we transfer to them.
So the resemblance exists, according to science
In various studies during the 1990s, behavioral scientists have found that some people are so much like their dogs that observers external could perfectly match them based solely on photographs. Furthermore, they have suggested that this phenomenon could be universal and very common, regardless of culture, race, country of residence, etc.
In these experiments, test participants were shown three images, one person and two dogs, and asked to match owners with pets. Test participants successfully matched 16 breeds to their owners from a total of 25 image pairs. When people decide to choose a dog as a companion animal, some take a long time because they look for one that, on some level, resembles them, and when they find the right one they get what they want.
The eyes, the portal of the soul
This is a worldwide known statement that really has to do with our personality and the way we see life. Sadahiko Nakajima, a Japanese psychologist at Kwansei Gakuin University, suggests in her most recent research from 2013 that it is the eyes that hold the key to resemblance between people
She conducted studies where she selected photos of dogs and people that had their noses and mouths covered and only their eyes uncovered. Even so, the participants were successful in choosing the dogs along with their respective pets. However, when the opposite was done and the eye area was covered, the test participants failed to get it right.
In this way, when asked " Is it true that dogs look like their owners?", we can answer without any doubt that yesIn some cases the resemblance is more noticeable than in others but, in most cases, there are similarities that are not overlooked. Likewise, these similarities do not always coincide with the physical aspect, since, as we commented in the previous section, when choosing a pet we unconsciously look for one that resembles us, either in appearance or in personality. Thus, if we are calm we will select a calm dog, while if we are active we will look for one that can keep up with us.
