Management Practices and Owner Bonds Are Linked to Horse Personality

A large international survey of horse owners has found that equine personality is systematically associated not only with genetics, age, and breed, but also with how horses are housed, ridden, and cared for, and with the quality of the relationship they share with their owners. The study, led by Postdoctoral Researcher Océane Liehrmann of the University of Turku in Finland and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Its central message is that personality is not something that develops independently of a horse’s surroundings: horses live in environments people create and in relationships people build for them, and both leave measurable traces in how the animals behave. Horse personality has long been recognized as a factor influencing animal welfare, training outcomes, and the quality of human–horse interactions, yet far less has been known about how the human-shaped environment contributes to equine temperament.

To address this question, the research team conducted an online survey during 2023–2024, gathering responses from 2,257 horse owners describing approximately 2,767 horses across Europe, North America, and beyond. Each owner rated their horse’s personality using a 52-item questionnaire and supplied detailed information about housing conditions, the frequency of riding and groundwork, time spent in unstructured interaction with the animal, headgear use, ownership history, and the duration of the relationship. Statistical analysis of the responses revealed four distinct personality dimensions. Human Sociability captures a horse’s tendency to seek out and enjoy interaction with people; Attentiveness reflects the capacity to focus on and cooperate with human cues; Neuroticism measures emotional reactivity and sensitivity to stress; and Horse Sociability describes the tendency to engage in affiliative, non-aggressive interactions with other horses. As expected, intrinsic factors such as age, sex, and breed emerged among the strongest drivers of personality scores. Warmbloods, for example, scored highest on Neuroticism, whereas draft horses scored lowest, and geldings consistently scored higher than mares on both Human Sociability and Attentiveness, indicating that biological variables remain a powerful baseline against which environmental effects must be interpreted.

Nevertheless, the human side of the equation proved far from negligible. The length and stability of the owner relationship were linked to Human Sociability: horses that had been with the same owner for more than ten years scored about 12 percent higher on this dimension than horses that had been with their current owner for less than a year, while horses that had passed through multiple owners scored lower than those acquired directly from a breeder. According to Liehrmann, these patterns suggest that familiarity and relational continuity contribute to how openly and comfortably horses engage with people, and that frequent changes of owner or stable may leave a lasting mark on a horse’s willingness to seek human contact. The way owners spent their time with their animals also mattered. Owners who frequently shared unstructured moments with their horses — simply being present, offering scratches, and demanding nothing in return — had horses that scored higher on Human Sociability. Riding frequency, by contrast, was tied to calmness: horses ridden four to seven times per week scored higher on Attentiveness and lower on Neuroticism, while rarely ridden horses scored higher on Neuroticism. The authors caution that this association is open to two interpretations: it may reflect habituation from regular training and handling, or it may simply be that calmer horses are the ones chosen for regular use.

One of the clearest findings concerned Horse Sociability. Horses housed alone consistently scored lower on this dimension than horses living with other horses, regardless of whether the company consisted of a single companion or a full herd. The researchers note that this result raises important welfare considerations, while acknowledging two possible explanations. Horses housed alone may score lower because social isolation limits the expression of affiliative behaviour, or it may be that horses perceived as socially unfit are the ones kept in isolation. In either case, the results point to social housing as an important consideration for both welfare and behavioural development. The researchers are careful to emphasize the limits of the evidence. The study is cross-sectional, meaning that management practices and personality scores were measured at the same point in time, so it cannot establish causation. The associations identified are also modest in magnitude, and intrinsic factors such as breed, age, and sex remained among the strongest predictors of personality. Longitudinal studies, in which the same horses are followed over time as their management and relationships change, are needed to clarify whether management decisions shape personality, whether personality shapes management decisions, or whether the influence runs in both directions.

Even with these caveats, the findings show that housing conditions, the frequency and quality of human interactions, and the stability of ownership history are all associated with measurable differences in personality profiles. For a species whose daily life is almost entirely structured by human decisions — from stable design to riding schedules to the question of whether it lives alone or in a herd — that conclusion carries practical weight. “Understanding how management and relationship factors interact with personality has direct implications for horse welfare,” Liehrmann concludes. “If we design environments that allow horses to develop socially, maintain stable relationships, and enjoy positive interactions with humans, we may be doing more than making horses easier to handle, we may help them develop their personality in a more positive way.”

Subject of Research: Associations between management practices, human–horse relationships, and horse personality traits

Article Title: How we manage and engage with our horses shapes their personality

Article References: How we manage and engage with our horses shapes their personality. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: horse personality, animal welfare, human-horse relationship, equine behaviour, social housing, riding frequency, neuroticism, horse sociability, owner survey, Royal Society Open Science, University of Turku, animal behaviour