Hungarian university study: Dogs are both children and best friends in the human social network
A new study by the Department of Ethology at Eรถtvรถs Lorรกnd University (ELTE), published on Tuesday in Scientific Reports, reveals that the role dogs play in the human social network is best described as a blend of a parent-child bond and a best-friend relationship. The research highlights how the emotional connection between humans and their dogs combines affection, trust, and low conflictโelements that typically characterise our closest human relationships.
The ELTE researchers set out to explore the position dogs occupy in our social lives. Using 13 relationship characteristics, they compared dog-owner bonds with four types of human relationships: those with a child, a romantic partner, a close relative, and a best friend.
Dogs are our children and best friends
According to the study, the human-dog relationship shares the nurturing love typically directed toward children, paired with the harmony and lack of conflict found in close friendships. At the same time, the dynamic is marked by a clear power imbalance, with the owner holding the dominant role.
Interestingly, the research also found that people who receive high levels of support from human relationships tend to report greater support from their dogs as wellโsuggesting that dogs complement, rather than compensate for, human social bonds.
More than 700 dog owners participated in the study, evaluating their relationship with their dog and four human partners across 13 dimensions. Respondents rated their dogs highest in terms of overall satisfaction, companionship, and the feeling of being loved. Dogs received scores similar to children when it came to care and reliability, while their relationships were as low in conflict as those with best friends. However, the dog-owner bond showed significantly more power inequality than any of the human relationships.
Significant power inequality in human-dog relationships
Enikล Kubinyi, head of ELTEโs Department of Ethology and the MTA-ELTE Lendรผlet Companion Animal Research Group, noted that owners exercise near-total control over their dogsโmaking all decisions and setting the rules. This degree of control and the dogโs resulting dependency may help explain why owners rate the relationship so highly, she said.
Kubinyi emphasised that dogs hold a unique place in our social world: they offer emotional closeness like a child, harmony like a friend, and predictability stemming from the owner-directed nature of the relationship. โThis may be why our bonds with them are often so deep and fulfilling,โ she added.
Human-dog and human-human relationships
The study also examined how peopleโs evaluations of their relationships with dogs related to their human connections. Contrary to expectations, individuals who felt more supported by people also reported higher levels of support from their dogs. โWe assumed that people with fewer supportive human relationships would rely more heavily on their dogsโbut our results didnโt confirm that,โ said Dorottya Ujfalussy, a researcher at ELTEโs Institute of Biology. The data suggest that people donโt turn to dogs simply to fill emotional gaps left by humans.
The researchers noted, however, that the participants were volunteers, likely representing individuals generally satisfied with their social lives. As such, the findings may not fully reflect the experiences of more vulnerable social groups who may rely more heavily on dogs for emotional support.
Dogs can offer different types of support
โDogs offer different types of emotional and social support depending on what their owners need,โ said Borbรกla Turcsรกn, the studyโs lead author. โSome people seek companionship and fun, others value reliability and emotional stability, while some simply want someone to care for.โ
Unlike earlier studies that categorised the dog-owner relationship as either โfamily memberโ or โpet,โ the ELTE researchers used a new, multidimensional framework to better capture the complexity of this bond.
According to the study, this approach provides a more accurate picture of how dogs fit into human social networks and helps explain why the form of support people seek from their dogs can vary so greatlyโand why, for many, these relationships are so profound and meaningful.
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