Dance moves 'can reveal your personality'

Geoff Luck of University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, who led the study, was quoted by 'The Daily Telegraph' as saying, "Music is known to evoke strong emotions in people and emotions can be expressed through bodily movement.

"People use body motions as reliable indicators of others' personality types, and even the movements of robots have been shown to elicit attributes of 'personality' by observers."

In fact, for the study, the researchers studied the dance moves of 60 volunteers who had been selected from 900 people who conducted personality tests. The dancers were picked due to having strong scores in one of the five main personality traits being studied.

Each of the volunteers were asked to dance spontaneously to 30 different tracks from six different genres of music -- rock, techno, Latin, jazz, funk and pop.Using motion capture technology, the researchers recorded the dance styles of all the volunteers as they were played each musical clip before analysing the movements using computer software.
Subsequently, using personality tests, they assessed volunteeers into one of five "types". They then observed how each members of each group danced to different kinds of music.The researchers found that extroverts moved their bodies around most on the dance floor, often with energetic and exaggerated movements of their head and arms; neurotic individuals danced with sharp, jerky movements of their hands.

Likewise, agreeable personalities tended to have smoother dancing styles, making use of the dance floor by moving side to side while swinging their hands, while open -minded people tended to make rhythmic up-and-down movements, and did not move around as much as most of the others.

People who were conscientious or dutiful moved around the dance floor a lot, and also moved their hands over larger distances than other dancers, the study found.
Luck said: "Certain movements may be more representative of particular genres, such as the way listeners tend to nod their head or tap their foot when listening to jazz music.
"Future work might examine how other genres of music, such as classical or world music, influence listeners' spontaneous movements. Such music may not elicit the same kind of rhythmical dancing movements, but would help us better understand the effects of music on body movement."