Society ''Animals BRILL Society & Animals 21 (2013) 1-16 brill .c Cat Person, Dog Person, Gay, or Heterosexual: The EfFect of Labels on a Man's Perceived Masculinity, Femininity, and Likability Robert W. MitcheU* and Alan L. Ellis *Eastern Kentucky University robert.mitchell@eku.edu Abstract American undergraduates (192 male, 521 female) rated masculinity, femininity, and likability of two men (one highly masculine and unfeminine, one normally masculine with low feminin- ity) from a videotaped interaction. Participants were informed that both men were cat persons, dog persons, heterosexual, adopted, or gay, or were unJabeled. Participants rated the men less masculine when cat persons than when dog persons or unlabeled, and less masculine and more feminine when gay than when anything else or unlabeled. The more masculine man received lower feminine ratings when a dog person than when a heterosexual, and higher masculine rat- ings when a dog person than when unlabeled. Labels did not afFea likability. Overall, the gay label consistently promoted cross-gender attributions, the dog person label encouraged some- what heightened gender-appropriate attributions, and the cat person label allowed for normative attributions. Keywords adopted label, cat person, dog person, femininity, gay label, gender-related attributions, hetero- sexual label, labeling, likability, masculinity, stereotyping Introduction In the late 1800s, writers on both linguistic and animal topics noted a remark- able phenomenon: English speakers thought of cats as female and feminine, and dogs as male and masculine, regardless ofthe animals' actual sex. Authors noted that these attributions seemed to fit aspects of the animals to culturally specified aspects of male and female people: Confusion of gender arises constantly with regard to the doganA cat; these animals are so intimately connected with their human friends that they are seldom spoken of as neuter; the baby may be it, but the dog is he, and the cat she. Sofixeda rule is this, that the female dog is constantly spoken of as he; and the male cat almost tmiversally as she. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685306-12341266