The science behind why dogs look like their owners may surprise you: ‘I don't think people should feel embarrassed'

CNN

09-03-2025

Disney fans probably remember the scene in the classic 1961 film '101 Dalmatians' in which the Dalmatian Pongo sits by a window, watching other dogs and their owners walk by outside.
Each dog that goes past looks uncannily like its owner.
Dogs who resemble their human owners has been observed in research, too. In one study, published in 2015, women with long hair tended to prefer dogs with similarly long ears, and women with short hairstyles preferred prick-eared dogs.
Experts say this psychological phenomenon is a result of us humans preferring pets, people or even objects that resemble ourselves. After all, we are exposed to our own faces daily in the mirror. If we choose a dog that resembles what we see in ourselves, it can be comforting. The dog's features may feel familiar.
'Let's say you're at a shelter and you're looking at lots of different potential options. You're not necessarily spending a lot of explicit time trying to figure out what features of each dog you want. It's more of this overall feeling, and when you have those overall feelings, then you've got to understand what drives those. One of the things that drives that feeling that something is desirable, is that it has some familiarity to it,' said Art Markman, a cognitive scientist and senior vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
'There's lots of ways that something can begin to feel familiar to you, one of which is you might have had a dog just like that as a kid,' Markman said. 'But another thing that could make something feel familiar is that it resembles something that you've encountered before – like, say, yourself.'
The dog may have a mop of hair like yours or the same quizzical look on its face, Markman said.
'Whatever it is, it's something that you recognize,' he added. 'That flash of recognition gives you this feeling that this is something that you resonate with, which can then increase your likelihood of picking something without ever realizing that you've chosen it, in part, because of its resemblance to yourself.'
In another study, published in 2004, strangers who looked at 45 dogs and their owners who were photographed separately were able to match the purebred dogs with their people, based on the images alone.
'Our research showed that people were able to match pictures of dogs and owners together at a rate higher than chance. However, this only worked when the dog was purebred. We think that this is likely because purebred dogs are predictable in both their looks and their temperament. This allows people to pick a dog that best fits them in looks, personality, and activity level,' Michael Roy, an author of the study and a psychology professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, said in an email.
'The resemblance between dog and owner can be at a physical level – they look similar – or at an overall level – this looks like the type of person who would own that type of dog,' he wrote. 'For example, you might match someone that looks outgoing and outdoorsy with Labrador over a Chihuahua.'
Some experts say this is an example of the 'mere-exposure effect,' a psychological phenomenon in which people prefer things that they have been exposed to – and this can go beyond pet dogs. Another example includes people who may be more likely to enjoy a song if they have listened to similar music before.
'Think about it like this: When you go to a rock concert, somewhere during the show, the band plays the song that's been on the radio recently, and the crowd goes wild,' Markman said. 'The crowd goes wild not because that is objectively the band's best song but because it's the band's most familiar song.'
Another study, published in 2014, found that observers were able to match car owners with the front views of their vehicles because they resembled each other. Even with consumer products, people tend to be attracted to something more when they are exposed to it more.
'More we see or hear something, the more we tend to like it. It would not necessarily explain why you might like a specific dog but can explain trends in dog ownership. If most of the people around you have Labradors, your liking of them might grow due to seeing them often, thereby increasing your chances of getting one too,' Roy said in the email.
The phenomenon appears to emerge only when selecting a dog as a personal companion, not when choosing one for an occupation, such as to work with a police department or on a farm, according to researchers. This might be because, for decisions related to occupation, more time and research is put into making the selection process.
'There seem to be these two systems underlying the way we think. One of those systems is a fast, kind of intuitive judgment system, and the other is a slower, more deliberative system,' Markman said.
'These effects, like the mere-exposure effect, tend to influence decisions you make based on that faster, more intuitive system,' he said. 'When you allow yourself to be slower, to be more deliberative, to really write down the strengths and weaknesses of the decision that you're making, and to the extent that you try to rely on other expert opinions, you'll get less of an influence of factors like the mere-exposure effect.'
In some cases, this intuitive attraction toward things that feel familiar or resemble ourselves – characterized as 'self seeking like' – may occur when selecting not only a pet but a human companion too, said Klause Jaffe, a scientist at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Venezuela.
He has researched how humans choose their pet dogs based on a phenomenon known as assortative mating, which has been studied experimentally among various species and even plants. It appears that the principles governing this phenomenon are the same whether applied to human relationships or to those between animals and humans; similarity or familiarity play a key role.
'In order for sexual organisms to be successful, they have to choose a partner that somehow resembles them,' Jaffe said. 'If a donkey tries to mate with a cow, nothing happens.
'Similarly, we attract partners who reflect some of our characteristics, and this happens outside of someone's race, skin color and sexual orientation,' he said. Similarities between partners can range beyond appearance to having familiar mannerisms, experiences, education, similar tastes in fashion or even daily habits.
According to researchers, no matter the intricacies or type of relationship, the theory still appears to apply.
'The relationship we found between dogs and owners is like other relationships. The best indicator for sustained friendships and romantic relationships is similarity,' Roy said. 'We surround ourselves with people that are like us in some way.'
So when faced with that decision of choosing a pet, people shouldn't worry or stress about the role that the mere-exposure effect or other psychological phenomena may play, Markman said.
'If your decision gets driven in part because the pet feels familiar, and that happens because it looks a little bit like you, that's not a bad thing,' he said. 'I don't think people should feel embarrassed that that went into their decision in some ways. I think if that's going to make you love the pet more, hey, more power to it.'