The ability to interpret affective states in horses' body language is associated with experience with animals

Abstract

In light of an increasing interest in the human ability to read equine emotions, Braun et al. (2024) recently showed that horse-experienced individuals performed better in interpreting affective states in horses’ body language than horse-inexperienced individuals. Further, individuals with a high emotion recognition ability performed better in interpreting horses’ affective states than individuals with a low emotion recognition ability. The authors operationalized the ability to interpret affective states from horses’ body language by means of the behavior identification test (BIT). In the BIT, participants are presented with 32 photographs of horses that express different affective states and, for each photograph, are asked to choose which out of eight affective states the depicted horse expresses in its body language. In the present study, we scrutinized the replicability and the robustness of these findings. Further, we tested the idea that a better ability to interpret affective states in horses’ body language is associated with experience with animals in general but even more so with horses in particular. We did so by employing the design by Braun et al. (2024) in a novel sample, expanded by a number of quasi-experimental variables (i.e., animal/horse contact while growing-up; current pet/horse ownership; contact with animals/horses during work). We directly replicated the effect reported by Braun et al. (2024) that horse-experienced individuals outperform horse-inexperienced individuals in the BIT. Further, we demonstrated that a higher emotion recognition ability was associated with a better ability to interpret affective states in horses’ body language. Moreover, we found strong evidence in support of the notion that a better ability to interpret affective states in horses’ body language is associated with experience with animals in general and, more strongly, with horses in particular, be it during childhood or currently. We call future research to test the idea that the ability to interpret affective states in horses’ body language can be trained through contact with horses or other animals by means of experimental designs to identify a potential causal relation.