Alan B wrote:Yeah. But if you had Muslim pussy cats that would be OK.



Just thought I would contribute to the OT.

I nearly raised you a link to a report on cat ownership in Saudi Arabia... but I can't find any figures!

Since cat ownership is connected to introversion—cats presumably being more suitable for the introvert, though I have only ever preferred dogs—and schizophrenia is a pathological extreme of introversion, this may not be very surprising.

Don't know if pathogens have anything to do with it. They might but I have no idea.

Sadegh wrote:Since cat ownership is connected to introversion—cats presumably being more suitable for the introvert, though I have only ever preferred dogs—and schizophrenia is a pathological extreme of introversion, this may not be very surprising.

Don't know if pathogens have anything to do with it. They might but I have no idea.

Again, the link is between cat ownership and childhood.

Some suspect a link to cat-borne Toxoplasmosis. idk

The OP's studies:

Growing up with a family cat is a significant if improbable commonality among people who develop schizophrenia.

"Cat ownership in childhood has now been reported in three studies to be significantly more common in families in which the child is later diagnosed with schizophrenia or another serious mental illness," wrote the researchers behind a new study published in the journal Schizophrenia Research.

Those researchers -- E. Fuller Torrey and Wendy Simmons of the Stanley Medical Research Institute and Robert H. Yolken of the Stanley Laboratory of Developmental Neurovirology -- looked at an unused 1982 questionnaire that had been distributed to 2,125 families that belonged to the National Institute of Mental Illness, and found that 50.6 percent of people who developed schizophrenia owned a cat in childhood. These results were strikingly similar to two smaller studies conducted among NAMI members in the 1990s that found a 50.9 and 51.9 percent correlation.

So, if there is a link to Toxoplasma gondii, it's specifically concerned with transmission during childhood. As we already know that Toxoplasma gondii is a risk for the health of foetus' which results in advice for pregnant mothers not to clean out litter boxes, presumably the primary concern is that Toxoplasma gondii impairs development in such a way as to heighten the risk of schizophrenia.

That could be. I just don't know one way or the other yet.

I'm skeptical too, but I think it's more verifiable/falsifiable than notions of cat owners being introverted, and this being the link to schizophrenia.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ca ... cat-owners

There are standard psychometrics for (among other personality traits) extroversion/introversion so testability is not an issue. Also, there's good reason for (for instance) one of the four factors in the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences, which is specifically for measuring schizotypy, being labeled "Introvertive Anhedonia".

Sadegh wrote:https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201002/personality-differences-between-dog-and-cat-owners

There are standard psychometrics for (among other personality traits) extroversion/introversion so testability is not an issue. Also, there's good reason for (for instance) one of the four factors in the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences, which is specifically for measuring schizotypy, being labeled "Introvertive Anhedonia".

Awful study.

What is so awful about finding patterns in Big 5 traits from pet ownership? From a very large sample no less?

Sadegh wrote:What is so awful about finding patterns in Big 5 traits from pet ownership? From a very large sample no less?

I take exception to nearly everything written in the article. It would take an inordinate amount of time to go through each point, but the absurdity of some of the claims - the total lack of conceiving outside of the desired end: it's all restrained to the narrative.

According to my data, cat owners were one third more likely to live alone than dog owners and twice as likely to live in an apartment or flat.

People who live alone are more likely to get a cat than a dog because dogs need more owner attention, and a single working person won't be there to give it that attention, whereas cats can be left alone for much longer periods. For someone who wants a pet and happens to live alone, a cat's just a better choice.

People who live in apartments or flats find it difficult to own a dog - not only is there no garden for the dog to run around in, a dog's barking can annoy neighbours and most condos/apartments/flats forbid dog ownership for that reason. For someone who wants a pet and happens to live in an apartment, a cat's a better choice.

Conversely, someone who is part of a family may want a dog for a number of reasons, including teaching their kids responsibility, or home security.

Perhaps one of the most telling differences between dog and cat owners is illustrated in a single comparison. I asked people who own only cats "If you had adequate living space and there were no objections from other people in your life, and someone gave you a puppy as a gift, would you keep it?" The answer to this was compared to what I got when I asked people who own only dogs the same question about a kitten. More than two thirds of the cat owners (68 percent) said that they would not accept a dog as a pet, while almost the same number of dog owners (70 percent) said that they would admit the cat into their household. This suggests that most people who own only a dog are potentially dog and cat owners, while most people who own only a cat are exclusively cat owners.

People who live alone, and therefore are more likely to have cats for the previously mentioned reason of needing a pet which is reasonably independent, are not going to want the dog because that reason still exists even if space is not an issue - namely, there's going to be no one around to look after the dog. People who have dogs, on the other hand, are more likely to not be living in apartments or flats (due to the previously mentioned difficulty) and therefore have more space to adopt the extra body regardless of whether it's a cat or a dog.

There are admittedly some causality issues here but how does any of this completely negate the differences in personality traits observed? We we were talking about Extroversion earlier but how does the apartment situation bear on differences in Openness to Experience?

Sadegh wrote:There are admittedly some causality issues here but how does any of this completely negate the differences in personality traits observed? We we were talking about Extroversion earlier but how does the apartment situation bear on differences in Openness to Experience?

I was never contesting anything about differences in personality traits.

The two points I was contesting were:

I'm skeptical too, but I think it's more verifiable/falsifiable than notions of cat owners being introverted, and this being the link to schizophrenia.

So extroversion/introversion isn't a personality trait? What is it doing in the Big 5 then? Remember the mnemonic OCEAN:

• Openness to Experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

Sadegh wrote:So extroversion/introversion isn't a personality trait? What is it doing in the Big 5 then? Remember the mnemonic OCEAN:

• Openness to Experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

You seem to be having a conversation with someone else, Sadegh. Either that, or a conversation with me where I am not privy to what my part's supposed to be.

I think I've made the point I wanted to clear enough, and it has nothing to do with personality traits. I'm contesting that there is a link between cat ownership and being introverted. So, if cat ownership IS causally connected to schizophrenia, I don't think the answer has anything at all to do with personality types and which personality types are more or less prone to depression or mental health issues.

If there's a link between cat ownership and schizophrenia, I think it's far, far, far more likely to have an infectious etiology, but I am also skeptical of that.

Spearthrower wrote:

Sadegh wrote:So extroversion/introversion isn't a personality trait? What is it doing in the Big 5 then? Remember the mnemonic OCEAN:

• Openness to Experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

You seem to be having a conversation with someone else, Sadegh. Either that, or a conversation with me where I am not privy to what my part's supposed to be.

I think I've made the point I wanted to clear enough, and it has nothing to do with personality traits. I'm contesting that there is a link between cat ownership and being introverted.

N.b. introversion is a personality trait.

Sadegh wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

Sadegh wrote:So extroversion/introversion isn't a personality trait? What is it doing in the Big 5 then? Remember the mnemonic OCEAN:

• Openness to Experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

You seem to be having a conversation with someone else, Sadegh. Either that, or a conversation with me where I am not privy to what my part's supposed to be.

I think I've made the point I wanted to clear enough, and it has nothing to do with personality traits. I'm contesting that there is a link between cat ownership and being introverted.

N.b. introversion is a personality trait.

Send me the script, and I'll make sure to learn my lines.

wtf ... the Big 5 is the workhorse of personality psychology these days. I don't think there's a single general personality psychometric out there of note that doesn't include Extroversion/Introversion somehow.

Big 5 has it.

Myers-Briggs Type Inventory has it. (Not that I recommend MBTI, but it's there.)

Eysenck Personality Inventory has it.

Raymond Cattell's 16 Personality Factors have it, albeit in the form of separate factors that putatively make one's personality.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory has it, and that's not so much a general research tool as a clinical one. Still there.

What am I missing here?

Obli...

To be clear:

• Schizophrenia is not caused by any one single thing so there is perhaps room for Toxoplasmosis among the various other causes that result in the single great effect.
• I don't think that cat ownership, except perhaps for the Toxoplasmosis link, causes schizophrenia. I suspect that introversion contributes to both cat ownership and schizophrenia and they simply tend to co-occur.