Reading Pain in Horse and Human Faces: The Influence of Horse Experience, Social Anxiety, and Empathy
Authors: N. J. Gregory, Mollie Trimmer, Trudi Dempsey, Rosa Verwijs, Gabriel Carreira Lencioni, R. L. Moseley
Journal: Anthrozoös
Summary
# Reading Pain in Equine and Human Faces: Experience Trumps Empathy Pain recognition in horse faces represents an understudied but clinically significant area, given the central role of accurate welfare assessment in equine practice. Gregory and colleagues surveyed 100 participants (30 with horse-care experience, 70 without) who rated photographs of 30 human and 30 horse faces for pain, arousal, and valence, whilst also completing standardised psychological assessments measuring empathy traits and social anxiety; equine behaviour professionals provided baseline accuracy benchmarks for the horse faces. Participants demonstrated substantially higher accuracy when identifying pain in human versus equine faces, yet crucially, horse-experienced individuals outperformed novices at recognising equine pain, with years of practical experience serving as a significant predictor of accuracy. Social anxiety traits influenced pain recognition in human faces but not in horse faces, though interestingly, socially anxious individuals gave higher pain ratings to horse (but not human) faces—a dissociation suggesting different processing mechanisms between species. Notably, empathy scores—both cognitive and emotional dimensions—showed no meaningful relationship with pain recognition accuracy or subjective pain ratings for either species, challenging the assumption that inherently empathetic individuals are better at detecting animal suffering. For farriers, veterinarians, and therapists, these findings underscore that systematic experience-based training in equine facial reading is likely more valuable than personality-based selection criteria, and highlight a potential gap in pain recognition competency among less experienced practitioners that warrants targeted professional development.
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Practical Takeaways
- •Experience working with horses improves your ability to read pain in their faces—newer handlers should work with experienced staff to develop this critical welfare skill
- •Don't assume that general empathy or emotional intelligence automatically translates to recognizing equine pain; specific horse-handling experience is what matters
- •Pain assessment in horses relies more on practical familiarity than on personality traits, suggesting structured training can effectively improve all handlers' ability to detect pain
Key Findings
- •Participants with horse-care experience were significantly more accurate at recognizing pain in horse faces compared to those without experience
- •Years of horse experience positively predicted accuracy of pain recognition in horse faces
- •Social anxiety traits predicted pain recognition accuracy in human faces but not horse faces
- •Empathy measures were not related to pain recognition accuracy in either horse or human faces