In this study, researchers from the Department of Ethology at ELTE explore the role that dogs play in the human social network.

In the research, experts compared the owner-dog relationship with four types of human relationships based on 13 relationship characteristics. 

According to the results, the relationship with a dog combines the positive aspects of love for a child with the conflict-free nature of friendship, while in the dog-owner relationship, the owner clearly has a power advantage, they wrote.

The research also showed that the level of support received in human relationships is positively correlated with the level of support received from dogs: dogs are not substitutes, but complements, to human relationships.

In the research, more than 700 dog owners rated their relationship with their dog and four human partners (child, romantic partner, closest relative, and best friend) based on 13 criteria.

The results showed that people were most satisfied with their relationship with their dog, considered the dog to be the best companion, and felt that the dog loved them the most. 

Dogs scored high on the scale of caring and trustworthiness, similar to children, but also had low levels of conflict, similar to best friends. However, the power imbalance in relationships with dogs was much greater than in any human relationship.

The statement quoted Enikő Kubinyi, head of the Department of Ethology and the MTA-ELTE Lendület Companion Animal Research Group, who emphasized that owners exercise almost complete control over their dogs: they make the decisions, they set the rules. This vulnerability and controllability may also contribute to the fact that owners value the relationship with their dogs so highly, she pointed out.

According to Enikő Kubinyi, the results highlight that dogs play a unique role in our social world: they provide emotional closeness like a child, conflict-freeness like a friend, and predictability that comes from a human-directed relationship. Perhaps that is why we are able to form such deep and satisfying relationships with them, she explained.

The study also examined how ratings of relationships with dogs and people were related. The researchers found that people who received more support in their human relationships also received more support from their relationships with dogs.

"We assumed that those who receive less support from people would rely more on their dogs - but our results did not confirm this, " the publication quoted Dorottya Ujfalussy, a research associate at the Institute of Biology at ELTE, as saying that the samples did not seem to indicate that people would use dogs to compensate for the lack of human contact.

However, the researchers stressed that the subjects were volunteers who are likely to be more satisfied with their relationships than average, so the study may not reflect more vulnerable social groups whose members may be more reliant on dogs for emotional support.

"Dogs provide different types of emotional and social support depending on what their owners need, " added Borbála Turcsán, the study's first author. Some people mainly seek companionship and entertainment from them, others seek reliability and emotional stability, and still others simply want to take care of someone, she pointed out.

The researchers did not classify the dog-owner relationship into predefined categories - such as "family member" or "pet" - as was customary in previous research, but instead took a new, multidimensional approach.

This framework provides a more accurate picture of how dogs fit into the human social network and may also help us understand why different people most need support from their dogs in a given form, and why this relationship can be so deep and important for many, the statement said.

Source: 
MTI - The Hungarian News Agency, founded in 1881.

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