Poster Presentation The International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ): 27th Annual Conference 2018

Equine-human interactions in therapy:  A lack of research in horse-human bonding. (#230)

Emily Kieson 1 , Charles I Abramson 1
  1. Psychology, Laboratory of Comparative Psychology and Behavioral Biology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States

There is research to support the benefits of Equine Assisted Activities and Therapies (EAAT) to the human participant, but little into the behavioral psychology of the horse with regards to bonding with people.   Since many EAAT methods use horses to help clients practice empathy, compassion, and build interpersonal skills, there needs to be more understanding of how horses interact with humans in this context.  Historically, horses have been bred and trained for the benefit of humans and not for companionship, resulting in training methods based primarily on negative reinforcement (Bierke, Meinen, Wilkens, Leponiemi, & Hiney, 2013; Cooper, 2007; McLean & Christensen, 2017; Murphy & Arkins, 2007) although there is research to support the use of food as positive reinforcement in training (Craig, Varnon, Pollock, & Abramson, 2015; Ninomiya, Mitsumasu, Aoyama, & Kusunose, 2007) but few models of EAAT use methods of positive reinforcement (Kieson & Abramson, 2016).  Humans and primates use food as a social bonding tool (de Waal, 1989; Jaeggi, De Groot, Stevens, & Van Schaik, 2013; Koster & Leckie, 2014; Stirrat, Gumert, & Perrett, 2011) even correlating with oxytocin levels (Carter & Wilkinson, 2015).  Even in human-dog relationships, canines have been shown to respond to treat rewards as social bonding in addition to vocal and pet rewards (Cook, Prichard, Spivak, & Berns, 2016; Kerepesi, Doka, & Miklosi, 2015; McGreevy, Starling, Branson, Cobb, & Calnon, 2012; Payne, DeAraugo, Bennett, & McGreevy, 2015; Pongracz, Hegedus, Sanjurjo, Kovari, & Miklosi, 2013) which also correlates with oxytocin in both human and dog (Nagasawa et al., 2015).  There is no indication that horses perceive food sharing as socially rewarding, however, and few EAAT methods use these known positive rewards in their models (Kieson & Abramson, 2016).  Therefore, EAAT relies heavily upon historic methods of horse training and not on any research of interspecies communication.  Since there is no knowledge of how to interact with horses in ways that facilitate equine social bonding or positive reinforcement in a companionship or therapeutic role, further research is needed in this area to properly utilize horses as partners in this context.

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