As Maron Demecillo, Bachelor of Science ’23, helped his roommate comb through dating app profiles, he got to know which physical features she was typically attracted to. He also noticed that her usual preferences didn’t matter much when she spotted a cute dog photo.

“I started asking other people and they told me that, yeah, people sometimes swipe right for the dog and not for the person,” he says.

Using pooches to get likes is such a common practice in online dating that it even has a name: dogfishing. Demecillo notes that some people go so far as to use dogs that don’t belong to them to increase their chances at finding love online. Whether or not the tactic was actually effective was a question he decided to tackle in his Psychology Honours thesis.

“My professor, Dr. Eric Legge, does research looking at how humans and pets affect each other, specifically with well-being. A lot of the studies that he's done looked at things like animal visitation programs – like PAWSS here at MacEwan – but he’d never dealt with the social side of things before,” he says.

Demecillo was able to get both USRI Project Funding and a USRI Dissemination Grant for his study, which involved creating the interface for a fake dating site, hiring both human and canine models for profiles, and having nearly 500 interview subjects scroll through those profiles for potential matches. 

In the end, the dogs did have a positive effect on the amount of likes a profile received, but with a few caveats.

“Attractiveness still has a large effect on whether or not people swipe right,” says Demecillo. “However, having a dog present lessened the dominance of attractiveness as the sole factor of people’s swiping decision. The less conventionally attractive participants were, the more likely that the dog photo was useful.” 

Demecillo notes that for some, having a dog present acts as a “crutch,” making others take notice of them if they see a dog picture present. For classically attractive individuals, a dog photo may not be as useful, as others are already likely to pay attention to their profile based on their looks.

The pup featured in the photos also matters. Demecillo says that classic family dogs like golden retrievers and labradors typically generated more interest than less-cuddly breeds like chihuahuas or rottweilers.

He also found that dogs had the same effect in sexual and gender minorities and that the rate of matches in these groups was generally much higher.

“The dating pool is also much smaller for sexual and gender minorities,” he says. “A lot of them feel they cannot afford to be picky, because their choices are already limited.”

The project – and presenting it at Student Research Day in both 2022 and 2023 – sparked an interest in further research into dating and relationships for Demecillo. He’s now researching the relationship between sexual motivations, sexual satisfaction and social anxiety as part of his master’s in clinical psychology at Simon Fraser University.

“I'm actually very introverted, but in the research space I become a completely different person,” says Demecillo. “It's part of my identity now and that's something that I’ll always celebrate.”