Your Pooch’s Personality Influences How They Watch TV

When a doorbell rings during your favorite TV show, does your dog leap up and start barking or cock their head inquisitively? According to a new study, the answer to this question may be linked to your pup’s personality.

This doesn’t just apply to TV shows meant for human consumption. In recent years, dog-specific TV programming has become a popular enrichment tool among owners who want to keep their canine companion calm and entertained while they’re out of the house. Today, there are many TV shows—even entire cable networks—designed for dogs, but the science behind them is limited, Lane Montgomery, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate at Auburn University, told Gizmodo in an email. She and her colleagues investigated what drives dogs to exhibit certain TV viewing behaviors, finding that temperament plays an important role.

“A dog’s interactions with televisions can be both positive and negative,” Montgomery said. Understanding the factors that influence TV-watching behavior in canines can help increase positive reactions and prevent negative ones, depending on a dog’s unique personality and the stimuli presented to them, she explained.

The researchers recruited 650 companion dog owners to participate in an online survey that asked about their dogs’ TV viewing habits. This included questions about whether the owner trained their dog to watch TV, the average number of hours per week the TV is on, and the average number of seconds the dog spends watching TV. The survey also collected demographic and behavioral information about each canine participant. The final sample of 453 companion dogs ranged in age from two months to 16 years old and included both purebreds and mixed breeds. Montgomery and her colleagues assessed the dogs’ reactions to animal stimuli, non-animal stimuli, and the extent to which they followed objects on screen.

Their findings, published Thursday, July 17, in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest demographic characteristics such as age, sex, and breed do not influence dogs’ TV-viewing behavior, nor does prior TV exposure. Rather, it appears that the type of stimuli and dogs’ temperament traits, such as excitability or anxiousness, shape how they interact with TV.

The researchers found that dogs are generally more likely to react to seeing or hearing animals on-screen than other stimuli, with about 45% always responding to dog noises such as barking and howling. Fearful or anxious dogs, however, were more likely to respond to non-animal stimuli such as car horns or doorbells. Owners who described their dogs as excitable more frequently observed them following objects on-screen as if they existed in real life.

“Practically, this study helps inform what types of dog-specific programming would be most valuable for dogs,” Montgomery said. For owners, understanding how different canine temperaments respond to TV stimuli could help them select the right programs for their pets or inform training approaches to correct problematic behaviors toward TVs, the researchers concluded.

The authors note that the findings may not be representative of all dogs, as all survey respondents were pet owners whose dogs regularly interact with TV. Going forward, Montgomery hopes to examine these results in an experimental context.

“Studies have begun to do this, but it would be interesting to conduct additional research concerning how personality and television stimuli interact and how these findings translate into a real-world context,” she said. Such work would further inform best practices for using TV to enrich the lives of companion dogs.