Cat Owners Are More Cautious Consumers Than Dog Owners

Xiaojing Yang of the University of South Carolina and two coresearchers gave pet owners basic definitions of stocks and mutual funds, highlighting the increased risk associated with the former, and asked them which type of financial instrument they’d rather buy and how much they’d invest. Dog owners were more likely than cat owners to opt for stocks, and they allocated more money to them than the relatively few cat owners who made that choice did. Additional experiments revealed that cat owners also preferred products that prevented problems, while dog owners were drawn to products that promised gains. The conclusion: Cat owners are more cautious consumers than dog owners.