According to this Fickr photo analysis It seems that women prefer small dogs and men opt for larger dogs is mostly true, although the dogs preferred by both sexes are medium-small ones.
For the purpose of this study, images showing a single human and enough of a dog to allow estimation of its size or identification of its breed were tracked.
Partially true stereotype
In the study, images with multiple dogs were not scored (unless they were of the same race) and images with multiple humans were not scored. Images in which the dog looked like a puppy were also removed. Also removed were any images in which the dogs were involved in any type of service activity, or hunting, or were obviously part of military or police functions.
Images of homeless people with dogs were also left out, as they could be casual connections rather than based on considered choice.
The dogs in the photos too they had to look like they really belonged to the human in the photo, instead of being part of the background.
Images that obviously involved studio models photographed for commercial reasons were also not taken into account. Finally, the human being had to be an adult man or woman.
The tabulation of dog size by sex is, for women: 33% small, 43% medium-small, 19% medium-large and 4% large. For men, the results were: 16% small, 42% medium-small, 36% medium-large and 7% large.
Almost half of women prefer smaller dogs compared to men (76.3% vs 57.7%), while men were almost twice as likely to have larger dogs (42.3% vs 23.7% ). However, this data also shows that, overall, the most popular size dog, regardless of the sex of the owner, are medium-small dogs.
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The news
Is it true that women prefer small dogs and men prefer larger dogs?
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.