Science Says Dogs With This Specific Personality Trait Are The Smartest
Your cranky dog isn't just difficult. He might actually be a social genius!
1xpert | Getty Images Pro | Firn | Canva Pro For most of us, the allure of a canine companion is the happy-go-lucky way they always greet us with a wagging tail and a friendly disposition. But, of course, like most animals and the human pet owners who love them, they come in all different kinds of personalities. And it turns out that while those happy pups might be the sweetest, they are not necessarily the sharpest (sorry, golden retrievers!).
A scientific study found grumpy dogs are the most socially intelligent.
Marigold Holistic Pet | Shutterstock
In 2021, researchers in Hungary set out to discover which personality traits in dogs most correlate with fast learning. And they found that one trait tends to line up most with canine smarts: grumpiness. Turns out you can teach a cranky, crotchety old dog new tricks!
“People usually look at the different behaviors of dogs as completely separate phenomena and handle them as such," one of the study's authors, biologist Kata Vékony, told the website Kinship. "While I think it is important to be able to identify behaviors separately, it is as important to see their connections." Those connections proved very revealing in this study.
Researchers determined dogs' temperaments and then tested their performance in an activity.
To figure out which behaviors correlated with intelligence, Vékony and her fellow researchers started with a questionnaire given to owners about their dogs' basic demeanor. They asked open-ended questions about things like how their dog responded to being groomed or bathed, or whether they were likely to bark or snap at things or people they don't like.
Didgeman | pixabay | Canva Pro
Based on this information, researchers gave each dog an "irritability score" and then ran them through a test in which a favorite treat or toy was placed inside a V-shaped fence. A dog's typical instinct is to go directly for the thing they want, so researchers were observing which dogs would figure out they had to go around the fence barriers to get to the prize.
First, they tested the dogs by themselves, and the vast majority were unable to figure out how to get to the treat or toy within 60 seconds, regardless of temperament. Then, they tested a second group of dogs with their owners, and found that agreeable and grumpy dogs performed the task equally well.
The revelation came, however, in the third group of dogs, who had to do the puzzle with a stranger. In that case, the grumpy dogs — the ones less likely to warm up to the stranger — performed the task significantly more successfully than the happy-go-lucky doggos.
Researchers concluded that grumpy dogs are more socially intelligent.
Vékony told Kinship that the grumpy dogs' success ultimately came down to them being more dogged, if you will (sorry), about their aspirations than others. "It turned out that dogs that are less tolerant to being bathed or groomed or not getting things their way, in general, are also the ones who are more persistent and goal-oriented,” she said.
She noted that this does not necessarily indicate they're smarter overall, but rather that they're more socially intelligent. They have a better understanding of how to collaborate with humans, even if they're strangers, they're not exactly jazzed about interacting with.
This sort of flies in the face of what we'd normally assume about grumpy animals, or grumpy humans for that matter — that collaboration is not exactly their strong suit. And Vékony said we could all probably stand to learn a bit from these cantankerous canines.
PDerrett | Getty Images | Canva Pro
“After the events of the past few years, I’m surprised most people still have some of their social skills left," she said. "But as a grumpy human of a grumpy dog, I can say that sometimes we should just embrace our grumpiness." Who knows, maybe our collective crankiness will lead us to a higher goal, too!
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
