The research aimed to assess personality in four zoo-housed wildcats — two types of leopards, the lion and the wildcat of Scotland — and also in shelter-housed domestic cats. Based on ratings of the cats’ caretakers, three major personality dimensions were found per species.

The trouble came when the lion and the cat were both described with the same terms: dominance, impulsivity and neuroticism. Definitions in the article weren’t as clear as I’d hoped, but this last term seems to involve anxiety, suspicion and fearfulness of people.

(If you are interested in the results for the others, here they are: Wildcats’ personality dimensions were dominance, agreeableness and self-control; clouded leopards’ were dominance/impulsiveness, agreeableness/openness and neuroticism; and snow leopards’ were dominance, impulsiveness/openness and neuroticism.)

Here’s the thing: The researchers’ specific framing of the shared cat-lion terms must be grasped if the study itself is to be interpreted properly. Lead researcher Gartner notes that personality factors aren’t the same thing as individual traits. In other words, each lion and each cat can be assessed along a spectrum of the three factors, and each individual will differ in where it falls. It’s not inevitable that lions or cats will act any certain way.