Beware the gift horse who ‘rides’ the room

Clever Hans was never on Twitter (or X). He didn’t have Instagram or Facebook accounts, and amassed no followers on TikTok. The likely reason is that Hans lived in the early 1900s, which meant that he was unable to leverage off the opportunities presented by social media. He was also a horse. But given the range of four legged account holders on these platforms, that would have been unlikely to have been a limitation.

Clever Hans was German. As indicated by his name, as far as horses went, Hans was no fool. In fact, anyone who met him was apparently amazed by him, in particular his ability to be able to perform complex maths, answer questions, and even spell words by tapping his hoof. His owner, Wilhelm von Osten, was convinced – or claimed to be convinced – that Hans could understand and solve problems, communicate, and perform logical tasks just like a human.

He was also a bit of an influencer back then. Crowds would gather to watch Clever Hans answer questions by tapping out the correct number of hoof beats, seemingly confirming his intelligence. People believed they were witnessing an extraordinary phenomenon: a highly intelligent animal.

In order to make sense of Clever Hans, psychologist Oskar Pfungst conducted a series of controlled experiments to understand Hans’s abilities. The result was disappointing. Hans, it turned out, wasn’t as smart as he was crafty. Pfungst found that Hans was in fact not responding to the questions themselves, but to the subtle, unconscious cues given by his human questioners.

Hans could read the room. And so, when his audience held their breath, looked up, or moved a certain way when he reached the correct answer, Hans would stop tapping. It wasn’t the “facts” that he understood. Just people.

This discovery shocked his early 1900 followers. What they believed was proof of a horse’s intellect turned out to be a simple reaction to human signals.

More than that, Pfungst revealed how easily observers could be misled by their expectations and assumptions, a phenomenon that is now known as the “Clever Hans Effect”.

We can only speculate that if Hans was alive today, he would probably be employed by the United Nations (UN). As a minority – horses are terribly under represented – he would have been a shoo-in. He would be outspoken in his support for the Palestinian cause because he is a crowd reader and pleaser; his saddle would be green and red; and he would feast only on the finest watermelon. Hans would no doubt have discovered the power of social media – @CleverHans – and would acquire millions of followers who would hang onto each proclamation as the source of truth.

He would appear weekly on CNN, and become a columnist for News24.

The story of Clever Hans is an interesting one. Interesting because it was no different in 1907, when people chose to see what they wanted to see rather than what was truly happening.

I don’t know what happened to Hans after the facts became known. I don’t know if he went to the glue factory or hung around and waited for the UN to be formed. But I do know that in every generation, there are those who stamp their hooves pretending to be smart when all they are is beautifully adorned horses.