All Cats Have an Element of Psychopathy, New Study
2 Min Read
Psychologists studied the relationships between thousands of cats and their owners through a new questionnaire to test whether cats are simply a bit rude or...they are, in fact, psychopaths.
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Your cat could be a psychopath.
Have you ever wondered if your cat is a psychopath?
A group of scientists from the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University believes so, according to their latest research.
The study, which included 2,042 cat owners and was published in the Journal of Research in Personality, shows the development of the first-ever tool to detect psychopathy in cats.
The CAT-Tri+ is a 46-item test in which owners are asked to judge how well each statement characterizes their pet.
Statements include: “My cat torments their prey rather than killing it straight away”, “my cat vocalizes loudly (e.g meows, yowls) for no apparent reason”, and “my cat is very excitable (e.g goes into ‘overdrive’ and becomes uncoordinated)”.
Statements also include observing whether your cat rests on high areas if they "dominate" the neighborhood cats and if they purr when attacking people or animals, among other things.
On a five-point scale, all responses are graded. The researchers wanted to see if they might improve the bond between cats and their owners.
Measuring Psychopathy in Cats
Lead researcher Rebecca Evans said: “In our study, we developed a questionnaire measure of psychopathy in domestic cats.”
“The questionnaire was developed using owner-provided examples of their cat’s behavior in the context of the triarchic model of psychopathy (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition),” Evans explained.
“The final questionnaire measures five factors of feline psychopathy: boldness, meanness, disinhibition, pet-unfriendliness, and human-unfriendliness.”
Owners reported having a lower quality relationship with harsh and brazen cats, but a higher quality relationship with disinhibited and pet-unfriendly cats, according to her.
“We believe that like any other personality trait psychopathy is on a continuum, where some cats will score more highly than others,” she added.
“It is likely that all cats have an element of psychopathy as it would have once been adaptive for their ancestors in terms of acquiring resources (e.g., food, territory, mating opportunities).”
Evans explained that any cat with a particularly high Cat-Tri+ score can benefit from enormous cat trees and lofty scratching posts, among other things.
