This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A new study reveals that horse personality is not only a matter of genetics, age or breed but also systematically linked to how horses are housed, ridden and cared for, and to the quality of the relationship they share with their owners. The findings underscore the importance of everyday management decisions for equine personality and welfare.
The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Horse personality has long been known to influence welfare, training outcomes and the quality of human–horse interactions. While genetic and biological factors clearly play a role, far less has been known about how the human-shaped environment may contribute to building horse personality.
"Personality is not something that develops independently of its surroundings. Horses live in environments we create and relationships we build for them, and our results show that these matter," says lead author of the study, Postdoctoral Researcher Océane Liehrmann from the University of Turku, Finland, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The research group conducted an international online survey during 2023–2024, gathering responses from 2,257 horse owners of about 2,767 horses across Europe, North America and beyond.
Owners rated their horses' personalities using a 52-item questionnaire and provided detailed information about housing conditions, riding and groundwork frequency, quality time with their horses, headgear use, ownership history and relationship duration. Statistical analyses of the data revealed four distinct personality dimensions: As expected, intrinsic factors such as age, sex and breed were among the strongest drivers of personality scores. Warmbloods, for example, scored highest in neuroticism, while draft horses scored lowest.
Geldings consistently scored higher than mares in both human sociability and attentiveness. The length and stability of the relationship were linked to human sociability: horses with the same owner for more than 10 years scored about 12% higher than those with an owner for less than a year, while horses that had passed through multiple owners scored lower than those bought directly from a breeder. "These patterns suggest that familiarity and relational continuity contribute to how openly and comfortably horses engage with people.
Frequent changes of owner or stable may leave a lasting mark on a horse's willingness to seek human contact," explains Liehrmann. Owners who often spent unstructured time with their horses—being present, offering scratches and not demanding anything from them—had horses that scored higher on human sociability. Meanwhile, riding frequency was tied to calmness: Horses ridden four to seven times a week scored higher on attentiveness and lower on neuroticism, while rarely ridden horses scored higher on neuroticism.
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