Dog Personality
What is Dog personality? And, can dogs have personality? Personality is a set of attributes--such as sociability, aggressiveness, and willingness to please--that come together to form the social behavior of a species. What makes personality interesting is the variation of its expression among dogs within a species, population, or social group. Scientists working on social behavior of dogs or puppies are often struck by differences in personality among their study dogs.
If personality varies among dogs within a breed, what function might this variation have? Variation may be the expression of different strategies, as predicted by game theory. Within this hypothesis, there are two possiblities. First, it may well be that success as a dominant animal calls for a different personality than does success as a subordinate, and expression of personality depends on status within the social group. In this type of system, a dogs's personality may vary, depending on the circumstances. Second, personality may be fixed, genetically, for a given dog, but it may vary among individuals because strategies differ in their success, depending on environmental factors. If personality varies among dogs, but is genetically fixed for an individual, then the study of personality lies within the realm of behavioral genetics.
In dogs, Svartberg and Forkman (2002) identified the main variables describing personality:
* Playfulness
* Curiousity/fearlesness
* Desire to chase
* Sociability
* Aggressiveness
They suggest that the first four factors are all influenced by a single "broad" personality dimension, with aggressiveness working separately. This is, interestingly, quite parallel to the role of dominance in dog personality. Wilsson and Sundgren (1997)show that dog personalities have substantial heritable components, although their study isn't strictly comparable to Svartberg and Forkman's (2002) study, as they use different descriptors of personality.
In sum, personality in animals is real, measuable, and seems to be strongly influenced by genes. Variability in personality is, in a sense, genetic variability. This suggests that different personalities can be successful and persist in evolutionary time; if only one personality type were succcessful, natural selection would eliminate this variation.