--- title: Why Being Neurotic Might Be Good for Your Dog description: When people are stressed, their dogs tend to be, too. Here's how your personality is affecting your dog, according to new research. canonical: https://time.com/5604217/stress-dogs-and-owners/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-06-12T16:01:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T23:42:47.163Z article:section: Health og:title: Why Being Neurotic Might Be Good for Your Dog og:description: When people are stressed, their dogs tend to be, too og:url: https://time.com/5604217/stress-dogs-and-owners/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt987fa0478a3cf86a/69894b03e76ad251f5634c60/border-collie.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2119 og:image:height: 1192 og:image:alt: border collie og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Being Neurotic Might Be Good for Your Dog twitter:description: When people are stressed, their dogs tend to be, too twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt987fa0478a3cf86a/69894b03e76ad251f5634c60/border-collie.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Being Neurotic Might Be Good for Your Dog > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jun 12, 2019 4:01 PM UTC  Close up of a Border Collie being held and looking direct into the camera. A loving expression on the dogs face. Close up of a Border Collie being held and looking direct into the camera. A loving expression on the dogs face. Getty Images  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jun 12, 2019 4:01 PM UTC Dogs are so connected to their owners that they share similar stress levels, according to a new[ study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43851-x) published in the journal _Scientific Reports_. When people are stressed out, researchers found, their dogs tend to be, too. Certain aspects of your personality—how neurotic you are, mainly—may also affect how stressed your dog is. Researchers in Sweden surveyed the owners of 58 Shetland sheepdogs and border collies about their personality traits and those of their dogs. They then outfitted the dogs with a special collar for a week to monitor their activity levels. To measure stress levels, researchers took human and canine hair samples and analyzed concentrations of cortisol, a stress hormone, in both. The dogs’ activity levels didn’t affect how stressed they were. Neither did the dogs’ personalities (measured by the validated [Dog Personality Questionnaire](https://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/DPQ-forms-and-scoring-keys.pdf), which their owners completed) or how many hours a day their owners worked. What did seem to matter was how stressed their owners were—cortisol levels in dogs synced up with those of their humans—and certain human personality traits. Curiously, people who were more neurotic actually had dogs with lower cortisol levels. “There is some indication that humans scoring high on neuroticism form a strong attachment bond to their dogs,” write the study authors, “and that these individuals, to a greater extent than others, use their dog as a social supporter.” That, in turn, means that they may serve as a strong social supporter for their pet. “It could maybe boil down to different types of amounts of interaction, but this needs of course to be studied further,” wrote study co-author Lina Roth, senior lecturer at Linköping University in Sweden, in an e-mail. These links were especially strong in female dogs (studies in other species have suggested that “compared to males, females show a higher emotional responsivity,” the authors write) and in competing dogs, who spend a lot of time working with their owners. “We do have a truly special bond to our dog,” Roth says. Next, the researchers will study more breeds of dogs—“but also other pets,” she says. “Maybe cats.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5604217/stress-dogs-and-owners/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5604217/stress-dogs-and-owners/"},"headline":"Why Being Neurotic Might Be Good for Your Dog","datePublished":"2019-06-12T16:01:12.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T23:42:47.163Z","description":"When people are stressed, their dogs tend to be, too","url":"https://time.com/5604217/stress-dogs-and-owners/","keywords":["Mental Health/Psychology"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt987fa0478a3cf86a/69894b03e76ad251f5634c60/border-collie.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt987fa0478a3cf86a/69894b03e76ad251f5634c60/border-collie.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"border collie","caption":"border collie","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/mental-healthpsychology/","name":"Mental Health/Psychology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5604217/stress-dogs-and-owners/","name":"Why Being Neurotic Might Be Good for Your Dog"}}]}] ```