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Tell someone you have a Border Collie and watch them nod: clever, then, and never stops. A Labrador? Friendly, greedy, mad about water. Breed is often the first thing people ask about a dog, and the first thing they use to guess what that dog will be like.
The idea runs deep. The Royal Kennel Club tells would-be owners that the main advantage of a pedigree dog is how predictable it is, with dogs of a breed sharing characteristics "such as how they look and behave"1. In 2022, a team of researchers in the United States put the behaviour half of that belief to the test, with help from the owners of 18,385 dogs2.
Their answer is more interesting than a yes or no. Here is what they found, why other studies seem to disagree, and what to weigh instead when you choose a dog.
What the Darwin's Ark study did
The study came from Darwin's Ark, a community science project that invited any dog owner to enrol their dog2. About half the dogs were reported as purebred and 85% lived in the United States2. Owners answered short surveys about their dog's behaviour and looks, around a hundred questions per dog on average, and 2,155 of the dogs had their DNA analysed from saliva or blood samples their owners provided2.
Every answer came from an owner, and owners can be swayed by the very stereotypes being tested2. The mixed breeds helped with that. Two-thirds of the DNA-tested mixed breeds had ancestry from four or more breeds, and when more than 13,000 people tried to guess the breeds of 30 dogs of complex mixed ancestry from photos and a short video, they got only about a fifth of each dog's ancestry right on average2. If a behaviour still tracked breed ancestry in highly mixed dogs, owners' expectations were less likely to be the reason2.
What it found: breed explained about 9%
The headline number is small. Across the behaviours surveyed, breed explained about 9% of the variation between individual dogs2. For the physical traits that define breeds, its effect was about five times larger2. A breed name is a far better guide to how a dog will look than to how it will behave.
Breeds did differ on average, but the spread inside each breed was wide. In every breed with 25 or more dogs, most individuals scored close to the average for all the dogs in the study, within one standard deviation of it2. No behaviour belonged to one breed alone2. Of 241 Labradors, the breed least likely to howl, 78.4% never howled, yet 8% of owners said their Labrador howled sometimes, often or always2.
Breed alone is not, contrary to popular belief, informative enough to predict an individual's disposition2.
Where breed does shift the odds
None of this makes breed meaningless. It was more useful for some traits, such as biddability, which the researchers define as responsiveness to direction and commands. Even there, knowing a dog's breed made predictions only "somewhat more accurate"2. On average, owners described herding breeds as more biddable and keener on toys, and toy breeds as more independent and less sociable with other dogs2.
The mixed breeds backed some of this up. Those with more Border Collie ancestry tended to be more biddable, matching what owners of purebred collies reported, though the genetic effect was small2. Those with more Labrador ancestry were less likely to avoid getting wet, which will surprise nobody who has walked one past a pond2.
Think of breed as nudging the odds. Owners placed 40% of Golden Retrievers in the top quarter of all dogs for sociability with people, against 22% of mixed breeds2. That is a big gap in how owners see their dogs, and it still leaves six in ten Golden Retrievers outside the top quarter.
Some famous traits did not survive the mixed-breed test. Owners of purebred Labradors rated them as more sociable with people, but in mixed breeds Labrador ancestry made little difference2. Golden Retriever owners tended to say their dogs were not fearful of strangers, yet Golden Retriever ancestry had no effect on that in mixed breeds. The researchers suggest gaps like these may reflect influences other than genes, such as breed stereotypes shaping how owners answer2.
At the other extreme sits what the researchers call agonistic threshold: how easily a dog is provoked by frightening, uncomfortable or annoying things. Here breed was "almost uninformative"2. So breed tells you very little about how easily one particular dog will be upset or provoked.
Why other big studies find strong breed differences
If breed explains so little, why do other large studies report strong, inherited differences between breeds? Mostly because they asked a different question. A 2019 study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B compared breeds, using each breed's average behaviour scores and DNA, and found the differences between breeds were highly heritable, closely tracking how related the breeds were. Trainability was among the most heritable of all4.
A 2022 study in the journal Cell also compared breed averages, and traced ten major lineages, among them scent hounds, terriers, retrievers and herders, with enough survey data to test behaviour along eight of them5. Along the scent hound lineage, for example, the further a breed had diverged, the lower its average trainability, which the authors link to a working style that follows instinct more than human cues5.
| Study | Dogs | What it compared | Main finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Darwin's Ark, 2022 | 18,385 surveyed, 2,155 DNA-tested | Individual dogs, purebred and mixed | Breed explained about 9% of differences in behaviour2 |
| Royal Society B, 2019 | Over 14,000 purebreds in 101 breeds | Breed averages | Breed differences were highly heritable4 |
| Cell, 2022 | Over 46,000 surveyed; DNA from over 4,000 canids | Breed averages along eight of its ten lineages | Lineages showed distinct behavioural leanings5 |
The studies fit together better than they first appear. The 2019 team matched breed averages taken from different dogs, and they note that this approach "does not provide resolution at the level of the individual"4. A breed's average can be real and inherited and still tell you little about one dog, because dogs within a breed vary so much2.
The Darwin's Ark and Cell teams both think breed leanings are far older than the breeds themselves, shaped over thousands of years as dogs were selected for work such as herding, hunting and guarding2, 5. They weigh behaviour differently, though. The Darwin's Ark team found no evidence that breeds' behavioural leanings reflect intentional selection by breeders, though it cannot rule that out2, while the Cell team argues that behaviour has been central to how dogs diversified5.
What else shapes a dog's personality
Genes do matter; they are just not sorted neatly by breed. In the Darwin's Ark data, genetic differences explained more than a quarter of the variation in nearly half of the behaviour questions, yet the behaviours people associate with particular breeds, shaped by many genes and the environment, turned up at varying rates in every breed2. Age mattered too: older dogs were rated nearly as composed as the most composed breed in the study, and puppies were far more toy-focused than German Shepherds, one of the most toy-focused breeds2.
A puppy's character is also still forming, or at least hard to read. Researchers in Vienna followed Border Collies from their first days of life: 134 were tested as puppies at six to seven weeks old, and 50 as adult pets at 18 months to two years. Only one trait out of ten, how actively a dog explored a new room, matched up between the puppy and adult tests6.
The authors point to experiences through puppyhood and adolescence, and to the owner's influence, as important in shaping the adult dog6. A review that pooled 31 studies found that personality grows steadier with age: the consistency estimate for adult dogs was 1.7 times that for puppies3. Even in adults, the authors conclude, personality is not fixed3.
Choosing a dog: what to weigh instead
So where does that leave you? Let breed tell you what it can, and get to know the individual for the rest, puppy or adult, pedigree or mixed breed.
What to weigh when choosing a dog
- Use breed for what it predicts well: size, coat and grooming, and roughly how much exercise a dog may need1, 2
- Meet breeds you like in person, at Discover Dogs or Crufts, and talk to a breed club1
- Spend time with the dog itself, more than once if you can
- Adopting? Ask what rescue staff or previous owners have seen of this dog's behaviour7
- Want fewer surprises? An adult dog's character is more settled than a puppy's3, 7
- Meeting puppies? Take first impressions lightly, especially of how trainable one seems3, 6
- Treat personality claims from DNA breed tests with caution: breed is a weak guide to behaviour even in purebred dogs2
If your dog's behaviour worries you
A dog who does not match its breed's reputation is usually just being itself. If your dog develops a behaviour problem, though, the RSPCA's advice is to start with your vet, who can check for illness or injury, either of which could be the cause8.
If your vet finds nothing wrong, they can refer you to an accredited behaviour expert, such as a clinical animal behaviourist registered with the Animal Behaviour and Training Council (ABTC). Choose carefully: the RSPCA warns that outdated advice or methods could make a dog's behaviour worse8.
So if your Labrador hates puddles or your collie would rather nap than herd, nothing has gone wrong. You have met the dog behind the breed.
Sources and further reading8 sources
The small numbers in the article link to the source behind each fact. Sources open on their own websites.
- Finding the right dog
- Ancestry-inclusive dog genomics challenges popular breed stereotypes
- Personality Consistency in Dogs: A Meta-Analysis
- Highly heritable and functionally relevant breed differences in dog behaviour
- Domestic dog lineages reveal genetic drivers of behavioral diversification
- The Predictive Value of Early Behavioural Assessments in Pet Dogs – A Longitudinal Study from Neonates to Adults
- Older dogs: some call it history, we call it character
- Find a clinical animal behaviourist