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Women less likely to date men with cats, study finds

Bullet Club

Banned
Want to attract women? Keep your cat out of your dating profile

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We have cat-astrophic news for animal lovers: Men who like cats are less likely to get a date.

That's the takeaway from a study by Colorado State University, which found that women are less likely to swipe right -- or say yes -- to men if they're posing with a cat in a picture.

Scientists showed hundreds of women photos of two men, both men pictured with and without a furry companion.
Their responses showed that the men's luck got noticeably worse when women saw the picture with a cat.

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The photos used in the study, which revealed women favored pictures of the men without cats.

"Men holding cats were viewed as less masculine; more neurotic, agreeable, and open; and less dateable," the authors wrote.

When shown the cat-free picture of one of the subjects, 38% of women said they were likely or very likely to casually date him, while 37% said they'd consider a serious relationship with him.

But a picture of the same man holding a cat gave the respondents paws for thought -- and those numbers dropped to 33% for each category. Meanwhile, the proportion of women saying they'd never consider getting involved with him rose from 9% to 14%.

By comparison, positive ratings for the second subject did not decline significantly when he was pictured with a cat -- but women were more likely to rule him out as a potential partner.

When he was pictured alone, 40% of respondents said they'd be unlikely or certain not to date him casually. But this rose to 45% when he was joined by a cat. Similarly, 41% said they'd be unlikely to consider him for a relationship, but 45% said the same when they saw him with the pet.

A total of 708 women aged between 18 and 24 were surveyed in the online experiment.

The findings are likely the result of long-held cultural stereotypes about cat and dog owners, the authors said.

"It is important to note that these findings were influenced by whether the female viewer self-identified as a 'dog' or 'cat' person, suggesting that American culture has distinguished 'cat men' as less masculine, perhaps creating a cultural preference for 'dog men' among most heterosexual women in the studied age group," they wrote.

"Women prefer men with 'good genes,' often defined as more masculine traits," they added, citing previous research. "Clearly, the presence of a cat diminishes that perception."

A different study last year found that the "crazy cat lady" stereotype is not supported by evidence.

"Cat-owners did not differ from others on self-reported symptoms of depression, anxiety or their experiences in close relationships," the study said. "Our findings, therefore, do not fit with the notion of cat-owners as more depressed, anxious or alone."

Source: CNN
 

Amory

Member
I'm not really surprised...but it's hard to pinpoint why

Cat people in general have always had the stereotype of being like, introverted, opinionated, and quirky. That's not to say they're bad people or that all cat people are like that, but it's very much a vibe and it works better for women than for men.

I picture like 90% of Era posters having cats.
 

appaws

Banned
What you need to do is take your shirt off and get on the back of a bear like Vladimir Putin…

....you will get a gang of pussy.
 

Airbus Jr

Banned
Why would any man want to own a cat?
Whats wrong with man owning a cat

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Men are sexist if they dont like fat or plastic ladies but men arent allowed to have pet cats becos the world decided it ?

Im not a cat person but i find this weird

Bcos the result of one studies says that?
 
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YukiOnna

Member
Yeah. I'm not sure if having a photo with your pet is going to garner chad energy.

Having a cat or dog is awesome though.
 

Lrnex

Member
One of my most successful profile pics is of me holding a very obese, hairless cat and smiling. It’s not about garnering the chad energy, it’s about making them laugh and feel like they can have fun around you.
 
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Mossybrew

Gold Member
I get the idea of big dogs being more masculine, and cats being feminine. Women inherently want a strong guy, even if they say otherwise.

Yeah I wonder if the results would be similar if they switched out the cat for some dumb little lap dog.
 

cryptoadam

Banned
What if the cat identifies as a dog though?

How do these women know are they misspecising these animals? speciephobes the whole lot of em.

SERFs, species exclusionary radical feminists.
 

Relativ9

Member
Well I don't know about cats, but my golden retriever gets me a lot of attention in the park when I walk her without the GF, way more than before. I'm also pretty confident that I have a few goodish looking photos with the sog that I could use to my advantage of I were single.

Men with cats...I mean it's fine if you also have a dog, but just something off about the idea of a single man owning a cat...and especially posing with it for a dating profile.
 
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