Future research direction on decoding animal well-being: the case of the horse

The study by Lesimple and Hausberger (2014) compared in 26 cases the decoding of wellbeing of the horse by a caretaker through a questionnaire on the one hand and an experienced outside observer on the other hand. Stereotypic or abnormal repetitive behavior (SB/ARB) is what they study under the broad umbrella of wellbeing. They reported that there was a huge discrepancy in the prevalence of SB/ARB between the results obtained through the experienced observer (37% of the horses) and the caretakers’ questionnaire responses (5%). On the basis of this result they conclude that there is underestimation in the judgment of wellbeing of the horses by the caretakers and they attribute it to the overexposure of the caretakers to their domestic horses. I believe this is an interesting area of investigation and there is scope for further research. Among the several possible avenues of continued research one can examine if decoding of horse’s SB/ARB is different across gender, age, affectivity (positive and negative), and personality dimensions of the observer because earlier work showed that judgment of human discrete emotions from the human face is influenced by gender (e.g., Hall and Matsumoto, 2004), age (e.g., Mill et al., 2009), affectivity (Rode et al., 2008), and personality (e.g., Matsumoto et al., 2000) of the decoder. But, such research attempt requires several observers to enable the use of inferential statistical analysis. For example, 30 male and 30 female trained observers could serve as the observers of the horse’s SB/ARB with affectivity and personality measures as controlled variables. Alternatively, 30 young (say, 20–30 years) and 30 (say, 60 and above years) old trained observers could form the sample for a study in which affectivity and personality could be used as controlled variables.