Personality,Anal Character,and Attitudes toward Dogs

Abstract

The research tests the hypothesis that people who strongly dislike dogs exhibit an obsessive or anal character and also investigates differences in personality between people who like and dislike dogs. Participants, 25 people who like dogs and 25 people who dislike dogs, matched fairly well for age, sex, and education, completed Kline's anal character measure to assess anal or obsessive personality and the California Psychological Inventory to assess general social and emotional adjustment. Analysis showed that people who disliked dogs scored higher on the anal character measure and also scored lower on the Empathy scale of the California Psychological Inventory, indicating that people who liked dogs have less difficulty relating to people. Correlations between scores on the two inventories are also presented, to clarify the nature of the construct assessed by the anal character measure.