diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/to_yaml-default_flow_style.yaml b/changelogs/fragments/to_yaml-default_flow_style.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..5dee7c51be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/to_yaml-default_flow_style.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+minor_changes:
+  - "``to_yaml`` filter updated to maintain formatting consistency when used with ``pyyaml`` versions 5.1 and later (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/53772)"
diff --git a/lib/ansible/plugins/filter/core.py b/lib/ansible/plugins/filter/core.py
index e7954ee887..6c35cc3ef9 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/plugins/filter/core.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/plugins/filter/core.py
@@ -61,7 +61,8 @@ UUID_NAMESPACE_ANSIBLE = uuid.UUID('361E6D51-FAEC-444A-9079-341386DA8E2E')
 
 def to_yaml(a, *args, **kw):
     '''Make verbose, human readable yaml'''
-    transformed = yaml.dump(a, Dumper=AnsibleDumper, allow_unicode=True, **kw)
+    default_flow_style = kw.pop('default_flow_style', None)
+    transformed = yaml.dump(a, Dumper=AnsibleDumper, allow_unicode=True, default_flow_style=default_flow_style, **kw)
     return to_text(transformed)