Researchers Discover Irresistible Dance Moves 215
sciencehabit writes "To find out if certain dance moves are more attractive to women than others, researchers recruited a bunch of college guys and used motion-capture to create avatars of them dancing. When women watched the avatars (2 videos included in story), the men they found most attractive were those who kept their heads and torsos moving without flailing their arms and legs. The researchers say dancing is thus an honest signal to women of the man's strength and health, just as it is in crabs and hummingbirds, who also move in special ways to attract mates."
What is love? (Score:5, Interesting)
If this article is any indication, it sounds like Will Farrell and Chris Kattan should be the most irresistible men on the planet.
Baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
Wrong question (Score:5, Interesting)
What they have established is who is considered a better dancer. I doubt anyone finds a blue figure "attractive" so they a judging who is the better dancer.
In real life the guy who moves the least is considered more attractive but a poor dancer. The reason is that the less you can get away with moving while dancing the more it will look like the girl is dancing "for you" and not "with you", demonstrating you have values worth fighting for even if you are a terrible dancer.
Re:To (Score:5, Interesting)
Neave says pilot studies by his group found that asking women who's a good dancer is the same as asking who's attractive.
Does this not undermine their argument? When actual men are involved, it boils down to who is better looking. So how he moves is of little importance as long as the women find him attractive.
You... you don't actually think that male attractiveness is directly related to physical appearance, do you? That would be very sad, that you'd genuinely know so very little about women. I mean, it's one of the variables involved, but it's far from being the leading factor (the big three are Money, Assertiveness and Muscles, in that order). I've had girls tell me the lead singers of Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones are very attractive, and you know those guys look like road kill, but they are rich and famous, and so they are very attractive.
Also, women seem to believe that how a man dances is a proxy for his sexual prowess. Which I know for a fact to be a false belief because the dance classes I took had a very big impact on how I dance but no impact on how I screw (it had an effect on 'how often', but not on 'how').
Re:To (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Spock's head would explode if he tried to analyze female 'logic'
I hypothesize that women are instinctually driven to cryptic behavior in order to promote high social intelligence in their mates: They're confusing for the good of the species.
As for the two types of dances shown in TFA, one was a submissive pose (shoulders hunched, head down, slow and predictable centripetal movement), the other was dominant behavior (open stance, chin up, unpredictable high-amplitude movements, isotropic gaze).
Re:Second purpose of my dance (Score:5, Interesting)
It's important to remember that flailing != movement. The 2nd guy is moving his arms a lot more, but everything that he does is connected to movement in his torso (either playing out a movement that started in his torso or moving in opposition to it). As a result, his movements look more fluid and "connected" to what he's doing with the rest on his body.
The first guy is a poor example of flailing, because he's hardly moving anything at all. Nevertheless, if the arms aren't working in concert with the torso, then whatever the arms do looks disconnected (and creates a look of flailing).
I think this is part of the "hard to quantify" difference between an expert dancer and a beginner. Beginners are usually replicating what the see, without any understanding of what muscle groups need to be involved in the movement. This makes what they do appear very flat and mechanical. Expert dancers have the experience to know which muscles to engage when, making their movements look dynamic and fluid.