Science Says People Who Let Their Dogs Sleep in Bed Share These 10 Personality Traits

More than half of dog owners in the United States share their bed with their pet every night. For years, the conventional wisdom was that this habit said more about a lack of discipline than anything else. But psychologists and sleep researchers have started reaching a different conclusion: the people most likely to welcome a dog into bed tend to share a distinct cluster of personality traits — and most of them are worth having.

You Score High on Empathy

The most consistent finding in human-animal bond research is that people who co-sleep with pets demonstrate measurably stronger empathy than those who keep their dogs off the bed. Sharing your most vulnerable hours — unconscious, unguarded, at your least put-together — with another living creature requires a baseline of care that runs deeper than affection. Psychologists describe this as empathic accuracy: the ability to sense what someone else is feeling without being told.

You Are Emotionally Open