Canine cognition · Research sample of 25,463 dogs
Dog Cognitive Profiles: How Your Breed Thinks
A cognitive profile is not a score. It is a shape: the pattern of what a dog leans on when it has a problem to solve. Two dogs can reach the same answer by completely different routes — one by watching your face for a hint, the other by working the physics out alone — and the profile is what tells those two minds apart.
The explorer below lets you pick any of the 22 breeds with at least 150 assessed dogs — plus mixed-breed dogs — and see its profile across the five dimensions of the assessment, indexed against every other breed in a research sample of 25,463 dogs. Every row prints its own sample size, and self-reported “other” or “don’t know” answers are excluded so no profile rests on a group that isn’t a population. The dashed line is the all-breed average. Almost every breed profile comes out jagged: tall on one or two dimensions, ordinary on the rest. Flat, all-round profiles are rare.
Use the breed profile as a starting hypothesis about your dog, not a verdict. Breed-level averages describe a crowd, and individual dogs scatter widely around them. The profile is most useful as a lens: if your breed tends toward independent problem-solving, a dog who ignores your pointing is probably being a good example of its type rather than being stubborn.
Pick a breed and see its five-dimension profile indexed against every other breed in the dataset. The dashed line is the all-breed average.
Breed cognitive profile explorer
Every breed has a jagged profile — strong on some dimensions, ordinary on others.
Research sample of 25,463 dogs · indexed across the 22 breeds with at least 150 dogs each, plus mixed-breed dogs
- Rows: The five cognitive dimensions (empathy, communication, cunning, memory, reasoning)
- Measured in categories, one bar each
- Bar length: The selected breed's standing on that dimension
- Measured in index 0–100 across the 22 breeds with at least 150 dogs
- Dashed line: All-breed average for that dimension
- Measured in same 0–100 index
- Value printed on each row: Raw score
- Measured in gaze seconds 0–90 for empathy; proportion correct 0–1 for the rest
Indexed score (0–100 within each dimension across breeds)
Bars are indexed 0–100 within each dimension across all 23 rows; the raw value with its unit is printed at the end of each row. The dashed line marks the all-breed average. Golden Retriever: n=950.
Source: Dognition Canine Cognition Data Center · research sample of 25,463 dogsdognition.com/data
The finding: Every breed has a jagged profile — strong on some dimensions, ordinary on others. Cognitive style, not a single ranking, is what separates breeds.
How we measured this
Frequently asked questions
- What is a dog cognitive profile?
- A cognitive profile describes the pattern of a dog's strengths across separate abilities — communication, empathy, memory, reasoning, and cunning — rather than reducing intelligence to a single score.
- Can breed tell me my dog's personality?
- Only loosely. Every profile here comes from at least 150 assessed dogs, but breed profiles describe averages, and individual dogs vary far more than breed groups do. The profile is a useful hypothesis about tendencies, not a description of any specific dog.
- How do I find my own dog's cognitive profile?
- Dognition's at-home assessment uses short science-based games to measure the same five dimensions and places your dog into one of nine cognitive profiles, with a full report on how it thinks.
Source: Dognition — a research sample of 25,463 dogs. Free to share with attribution.
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