Hmmm, interesting, and now I also feel free to contradict myself if need be
The (in my opinion) bad examples of anthropomorphism are: blanketing horses without the need to, keeping them confined and in solitude, feeding meals, or highly concentrated rations when they are not needed. - the things that we humans might appreciate as safety and warmth etc...
Also bad:
thinking that horses learn like humans do. Horses are very intelligent, but humans sometimes pre-suppose a learning ability to their horses without testing that the horse actually knows. And this is tragic, especially with R- methods... especially when the release doesn't really ever come...
I think good is: like you said Romy, looking for the feelings of joy, sadness, exuberance etc. The horse feels them in his own, horsey way, but they are similar enough to ours. Probably even more similar to children, with their "untainted" emotions...
I guess it really depends where the person is coming from. Just like with teaching riding, you can't have the same set of instructions for everyone. Everything depends on their starting point. Like giving directions for travel to a certain place - you would give very different direction depending on where the beginning of the journey is.
So I think that for some of us, thinking of horses as people might be good. For some of us, we maybe should think of them more as livestock.... And further complicating things - we are not all looking to "arrive in the same place"...
I think it's much more difficult to get the people who think of a horse as "a furry human" to see the other side of things. I think people who view horses as "just animals". well it wouldn't take much and you could show them a really perceptive horse, connected to a human, showing his feelings and responding to respect with respect.
But the other way, for people used to being around horses that are so "domesticated" that they have lost their true nature... I think you would have to take them to the wild herds. And not just for a day or two, but for seasons. And maybe that wouldn't be enough, some people are so disconnected from nature that to understand the horse is not possible without getting re-connected to nature...