The Scientific Explanation For Why Certain Dance Moves Are More Attractive

What pattern of fist pumping and hip swaying makes the ladies swoon over dudes? Science is here to tell us!

One researcher wanted to see whether humans move in the same way animals in the wild do when attracting potential mates.

[Dr Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist,] asked young men who were not professional dancers, to dance in a laboratory to a very basic drum rhythm and their movements with 12 cameras. These movements were then converted into a computer-generated cartoon – an avatar – which women rated on a scale of one to seven. He was surprised by the results.

“We thought that people’s arms and legs would be really important. The kind of expressive gestures the hands [make], for example. But in fact this was not the case,” he said. We found that (women paid more attention to) the core body region: the torso, the neck, the head.” Movements that went down terribly were twitchy and repetitive – so called “Dad dancing”.

And while the researchers didn’t study how members of the same-sex interpret these dance moves, I can tell you from person experience that, hands down, shoving your ass into my crotch does not impress.

[BBC; photo via]