We all know the drill. Some sensational headline comes out claiming that scientists “proved” something and we jump on the bandwagon if it’s something we’d like to believe.

So when two researchers – one veterinarian and one anthropologist – published a paper suggesting a guy seemed less “dateable” to a woman if he had a cat in his dating profile photo, some people got on board the “women don’t like cat guys” train immediately.

Of course, there’s much more to the story.

Lori Kogan and Shelly Volsche published “Not the Cat’s Meow? The Impact of Posing with Cats on Female Perceptions of Male Dateability” in the journal Animals in June of this year.

But what they hoped to understand was whether or not (and to what degree) women perceived men who were holding cats in their profile photos as masculine and how they judged their personalities without even meeting them.

They wanted to know because, in general, surveys have found that pet owners, in general, were more likely to be seen as more “dateable.” But they weren’t sure if there would be a difference depending on whether the pet was a cat or dog.

The researchers told Bored Panda:

“With the amount of research already existing with dogs, it seemed like a natural step to test if and how male cat owners are perceived among women.”

And they wrote in their journal article that:

“…we hypothesized that men posing with cats would be considered more attractive and desirable for short-term causal dating than when posing alone. In addition to attractiveness, we predicted that the cat’s presence would make the men seem more trustworthy, gentle, and caring, alluding to the possibility of a potentially valuable long-term mate and future father.”

The results, they say, were that “Men holding cats were viewed as less masculine; more neurotic, agreeable, and open; and less dateable.”

But c’mon. Did they not see this guy?!

No, they didn’t.

To get this result, the researchers showed two sets of photos to hundreds of women “who identified as female, heterosexual, and aged 18–24 who reside in the United States.” It asked them to imagine the man’s personality traits, attractiveness, independence, dateability, etc.

The guys whose photos they showed scored lower on the scales they were using to measure these imagined traits when they posed with cats.

Of course, this all assumes that a person takes nothing else into account but a profile photo when making a judgment about a dating profile.

And we have to say that the photos they staged were pretty…well, staged.

Even the cat looks unsure about his dateability.

Does that look like a dating profile photo to you? If so, we want to know what kind of wholesome dating app you’re using because we’ve never heard of it.

A professional headshot of a guy holding a cat seems more like a bad Internet meme to us.

Nevertheless, the women were asked to rate the men from 1-5 on the following imagined traits:

They were also asked what they were looking for in terms of long-term or short-term relationships so the researchers could see if “cat guys” were possibly seen as having more potential as long-term mates.

Here’s the second “cat guy.” The cat looks displeased with the entire thing.

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Source: Bored Panda, Animals