Personality and predisposition to form habit behaviours during instrumental conditioning in horses (Equus caballus).
Authors: Lansade Léa, Marchand Alain R, Coutureau Etienne, Ballé Cyrielle, Polli Floriane, Calandreau Ludovic
Journal: PloS one
Summary
# Editorial Summary Personality traits in horses appear to influence not just how quickly they learn, but fundamentally *how* they learn—specifically, whether they retain flexible, goal-directed decision-making or slip into automatic habitual responses. Lansade and colleagues presented 29 horses with a contingency degradation protocol (a task where the relationship between action and reward was systematically weakened) after assessing their personality profiles across fearfulness, sensory sensitivity, and social gregariousness. Horses generally demonstrated sensitivity to changes in the action-reward relationship, but individual variation was striking: fearful horses, and to a lesser extent those with low sensory sensitivity or low gregariousness, showed reduced responsiveness to degradation, indicating they had shifted into habitual responding despite reward contingencies no longer supporting their behaviour. Intriguingly, the researchers found this personality-driven shift to habit formation occurred independently of measurable emotional states during learning, suggesting trait-level personality architecture—rather than acute emotional experience—underpins cognitive flexibility. For practitioners, these findings have practical implications: horses predisposed to habit formation (particularly those with higher fearfulness) may require deliberate training strategies that regularly reinforce contingency between cue and consequence, as they are neurobiologically more likely to maintain learned responses even when circumstances change.
Read the full abstract on PubMed
Practical Takeaways
- •Fearful horses may be naturally predisposed to rely on habitual responses rather than flexible, goal-directed behaviour—consider this when training reactive or anxious individuals
- •Understanding individual personality profiles can help predict learning style and inform training methods; some horses will naturally gravitate toward fixed patterns rather than adaptive responses
- •Personality-driven differences in learning processes are independent of momentary emotional state, suggesting they reflect stable cognitive traits worth identifying early in a horse's training career
Key Findings
- •Horses with high fearfulness were significantly less sensitive to contingency degradation and switched more readily to habitual processes
- •Low sensory sensitivity and low gregariousness were also associated with earlier switching from goal-directed to habitual learning
- •All horses demonstrated sensitivity to contingency degradation between action and reward, showing goal-directed learning capability
- •Emotional state during learning did not explain the personality-related differences in habit formation