Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
PLoS One. 2020 Jan 3;15(1):e0227253. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227253. eCollection 2020.
Social dominance is an important and widely used concept, however, different interpretations have led to ambiguity in the scientific literature and in popular science. Even though in ethology dominance is an attribute of dyadic encounters, and not a characteristic of the individual, 'dominance' has often been referred to as a personality trait in animals. Since few studies have specifically examined the link between personality traits and dominance status, we investigated this in dogs living in multi-dog households using a questionnaire, which required owners to specify whether the dog had a dominant or submissive status, and comprised items of both the features of the individual (i.e. personality traits) and previous social experience (interactions with group members and strangers). Four distinct personality factors emerged from 23 behavioural items by principal component analysis, labelled as assertiveness, trainability, intraspecific aggression and independence. Binomial logistic regression was used to examine how the demographic information of the dogs and the personality factors predicted the owner's estimate of the dog' status as dominant or submissive. The personality factor assertiveness accounted for 34% of the variance in dominance status, trainability 5% and dog age contributed 4%. Dogs perceived as dominant scored more highly on the factors assertiveness and trainability, which can help explain why 'dominance' has often been suggested to be a personality trait, rather than a dyad-specific social status according to different traditions in behavioural research. Similar to the 'social dominance' trait in humans, owner ascribed dominance showed a quadratic trajectory in cross-sectional mean change across the lifespan, increasing during adulthood and then maintaining high levels until old age. Overall, our study proposes a multifactorial background of dominance relationships in pet dogs, suggesting that not only previous experience of social interactions between individuals but also age and personality traits influence owner perceived dominance status in multi-dog households.
社会支配地位是一个重要且广泛使用的概念，但不同的解释导致了科学文献和大众科学中的歧义。尽管在动物行为学中，支配地位是对偶遭遇的一种属性，而不是个体的特征，但“支配地位”在动物中经常被视为一种个性特征。由于很少有研究专门研究个性特征与支配地位之间的联系，我们使用问卷调查了生活在多犬家庭中的犬只，问卷要求主人指定犬只是否具有支配或顺从地位，并包含个体特征（即个性特征）和先前社交经验（与群体成员和陌生人的互动）的项目。通过主成分分析从 23 个行为项目中得出了四个不同的个性因素，分别命名为自信、可训练性、种内攻击性和独立性。二项逻辑回归用于检验犬只的人口统计学信息和个性因素如何预测主人对犬只支配或顺从地位的估计。个性因素自信占支配地位的 34%，可训练性占 5%，犬只年龄占 4%。被认为是支配地位的犬只在自信和可训练性因素上的得分更高，这可以帮助解释为什么“支配地位”经常被认为是一种个性特征，而不是根据行为研究中的不同传统的对偶特定的社会地位。与人类的“社会支配地位”特征相似，主人赋予的支配地位在整个生命周期的横截面平均变化中呈现出二次轨迹，在成年期增加，然后保持高水平直到老年。总的来说，我们的研究提出了宠物犬支配关系的多因素背景，表明不仅个体之间的社交互动的先前经验，而且年龄和个性特征也会影响多犬家庭中主人感知的支配地位。
