The impact of 29 films released in the United States was examined, each featuring a different dog breed. Classics such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Lady and the Tramp (1955), The Fox and the Hound (1981) and Beethoven (1992) were all judged to have influenced people’s choice of dogs. The study traces the popularity of the featured breeds for up to ten years after the film’s release.
The authors used the records of the American Kennel Club, which has been recording the numbers of registration for each dog breed since 1927, and keeps the largest such dog registry in the world. Looking at the effect of films released between 1927 and 2005, the study shows that the number of registrations of a particular breed rose significantly following the release of a film in which the breed had been featured.
Let’s look at an obvious example. The numbers of collies rose from 2331 registered in 1943, the year when Lassie Come Home was released, to 20,006 registered a decade later. The film, which focuses on the relationship between young Joe and his beloved dog Lassie, traces faithful Lassie’s long and difficult journey back to her dear owner after being sold by his family.
The films analysed covered quite a spread of breeds. Other factors you might assume come into play when choosing a dog, such as temperament or health, seemed not to affect the scale of these trends. Alberto Acerbi, one of the authors of the study and Newton Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol, said: “It seems to be pure fashion.”
A connection between the number of film views in the first weekend after its release and the rise in the popularity of the dog breed featured was observed. The study shows that earlier films generally created more widespread trends than the more recent films. The authors conjecture that this could be linked to the rise of home video, as well as the increase in the number of films released featuring dogs each year.
The impact of the films is perceivable, gradually, creating long-term rather than short-term trend changes. Out of the 29 examined cases, 14 show that the popularity of a breed reached its peak ten years after its feature in a film, rather than immediately following the film’s release. So apparently films are capable of influencing long-lasting preferences and inclinations in their audiences.
David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge, took a look at the research. He said:
This is a nice use of statistics, as they take into account existing trends before the film, but the results are perhaps not so surprising. Just as Toy Story can sell Buzz Lightyear toys, so 101 Dalmatians can make families want spotty dogs.
So maybe it seems obvious that Lassie made a good name for Collies, or that children started to feel very protective over Dalmatians. But such analysis of causes and patterns behind seemingly random trends further demonstrates just how much fictional narratives influence our beliefs and actions.
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“The results can be seen as representative of the general great impact of film on trends,” observes Tom van Laer, consumer researcher at ESCP Europe Business School. Indeed, a similar tendency is evident in the way numerous babies have been named after characters from the Marvel films, the Harry Potter series and television shows such as Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad.
In a recent article, van Laer writes about 76 different studies, which together show that individuals more thoroughly transported into the world of a narrative are more likely to adopt the outlooks and principles of the story.
Many of the films in which dogs play the central part are intended for children. Van Laer said that “under seven or eight years, immersion in fictional narratives is achieved more easily and thoroughly by children". He emphasised that stories are central to children’s development and such immersions in fictional worlds in childhood have deeper and more lasting effects.
But Acerbi warns against taking the results of the paper as proof that our personal choices are to some extent always determined by the media and entertainment we consume:
I do not think social influence is an all-encompassing force. Perhaps choices like dog breeds, or names, are quite ‘neutral’, so their popularity can be influenced by the presence in a movie. But this is less true for other choices with bigger consequences.
Others would disagree. One political scientist recently argued that the values promoted in Harry Potter influenced the politics of its fans. So Homeward Bound may champion the values of friendship and loyalty, and 101 Dalmatians the evils of the fur trade, but be sure to be careful about watching The Ugly Dachshund with your kids unless you want a Great Dane.
By Flora Lisica, The Conversation
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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Sad-looking humans have melancholy animal companions and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed creatures seek one another out. Perhaps owners are drawn to pets that mirror them. Or perhaps a shared life leaves its mark on their faces, as it is said to do for married couples.
Research has indeed confirmed that people and their pets look alike. Raters can match dogs to their owners better than chance, even after controlling for pet size and hairiness. More remarkably though, a recent study in the Swiss Journal of Psychology has found that people resemble their cars.
Raters who viewed a picture of the front of a car could correctly identify the owner’s face from a set of six potential owners at a rate better than chance. The capacity to match owner and vehicle could not be explained by sex stereotypes associated with car types, or by the cars’ masculine versus feminine appearance – and raters could not match owners when they only saw cars from the side or the rear.
The similarities between individual humans, pets and cars is fascinating, and just as fascinating is the general tendency for humans to perceive non-human entities as if they were human.
We are primed to see human features and intentions in natural phenomena and machines. It is no accident that we see faces in clouds.
Indeed, we also see faces in cars. The frontal features of a car irresistibly engage our facial template:
And just as we judge people’s personalities from their faces, we ascribe personalities to different car models.
One characteristic that we are very good at extracting from human faces is age. In a classic piece, American biologist Stephen Jay Gould used the evolution of Mickey Mouse to illustrate the facial signs of maturity. Mickey’s development proceeded in reverse, reflecting what Gould called “creeping juvenility”.
Mickey started life in 1928’s Steamboat Willie as a disreputable rodent, rat-like and angular. His snout was long, his forehead low, his eyes beady and his head relatively small compared to his slender body. He looked as if he belonged in a pool-hall or speakeasy, not the Magic Kingdom.
As decades passed he gradually infantilised. His nose protruded less, his features softened, his forehead bulged, his eyes enlarged, his head swelled and his body turned pudgier. He became cute.
A 2012 study demonstrated the same process in the perception of cars. The researchers presented Austrian adults with frontal images of 46 car models, all shown in a standard colour and size. Study participants rated whether each car looked younger or older, more feminine or masculine, more dominant or submissive.
The researchers then examined how these psychological properties mapped onto the cars’ physical features. For example, which features distinguished younger-looking cars from their more mature garage-mates?
The answer, according to the researchers, was precisely what we would expect based on what we know about human facial maturity. Younger-looking cars had larger windscreens (foreheads). Their headlights (eyes) were larger and rounder, and their grilles (noses) smaller. Youthful cars were, in other words, baby-faced.
Cars can be judged to look feminine, submissive, masculine or dominating based on their “faces”. We make the same assessments of people in our perception of human faces as we do with cars and their features.
Facially speaking, there is a single appearance spectrum from childlike, female and powerless at one end, to mature, male and powerful at the other.
The findings in the 2012 study could simply have reflected a population heavily exposed to advertising that plays on the appearance of cars and to anthropomorphic vehicles in children’s movies. Not so, found the researchers. Repeating the study in rural Ethiopia, where car advertising and Pixar are little known, they found exactly the same pattern of results.
Certain car models from that study typified the ends of the appearance spectrum. The most girlish cars were the new Nissan Micra, the Toyota Aygo, the Citroen C1, VW’s new Beetle and the Kia Picanto. The most hairy-chested were the BMW 645ci, 3 and 5, the Chrysler 300C and Crossfire and the Mercedes E.
These cars look different and they appeal to different kinds of people. They also have different metabolisms. The youthful, “feminine” cars are generally more fuel efficient than their brawny automotive brothers.
As we move towards lower carbon emissions, a cute car may be more than just a pretty face.
Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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[Top image by Jared Polin via Flickr Creative Commons]
