Talk about the power of a hard-wired life. Apparently, it's not only sex and relationships that technology meddles with these days.
Men, read carefully.
A new study, published by Biology Letters in 2010, says the exact dance movements that can attract the apple of your eye have been identified.
Don't worry. It is nothing similar to twerking at all.
Titled "Male dance moves that catch a woman's eye," the study has been conducted by Nicholas Caplan, Bernhard Fink, Jeanette Freynik, Johannes Hönekopp, Kristofor McCarty, Kristofor McCarty and Nick Neave. They come from the School of Life Sciences in Northumbria University, Newcastle and the Department of Sociobiology/Anthropology of the Institute of Zoology and Anthropology in University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
The researchers enlisted an initial sample of 30 men ages 18 to 35 to dance to a basic rhythm for 30 seconds, but with no specific dance moves instructions. These men are not professional dancers as well. They have no physical injuries, nor do they suffer as well from any health problem during the study that could affect their movements.
Pointing to an incomplete marker capture, the study however decides to exclude 11 participants, with only 19 male dancers engaged.
Calculated were the duration, speed, amplitude and variability of body movements through biomechanical analysis that concentrated on three body areas. One is the leg, including knee, hip and ankle. Second is the arm, including elbow, shoulder and wrist. Third is the central body, including trunk and neck.
The dance movements have been recorded through an innovative three-dimensional motion-capture system called Vicon, which pointed to potential biochemical differences between women's perceptions of bad and good male dances.
Each of their 15-seconder routine has been animated into a 3D or computer-generated avatar that holds no specific feature and is gender-neutral as well. Thirty-nine women have been asked to view and rate each of these avatars for dance quality.
From their initial analyses, 11 movement variables have shown significant, positive correlation with the observed dance quality. It also reveals the presence of three movement measures regarded as key predictors of dance quality. These are variability, amplitude of movements of the neck and trunk and speed of movements of the right knee. These movement measures have been considered as significant in indicating dance quality.
The study concludes that there are indeed particular movements in men's dances that can influence the perceptions of women in terms of dancing skill. It also suggests that these identified movements have the possibility to create positive signals of male quality.
"Male movements serve as courtship signals in many animal species and may honestly reflect the genotypic and/or phenotypic quality of the individual. Attractive human dance moves, particularly those of males, have been reported to show associations with measures of physical strength, prenatal androgenization and symmetry," study says.
"A 'good' dancer thus displays larger and more variable movements in relation to bending and twisting movements of their head/neck and torso, and faster bending and twisting movements of their right knee," the study also describes.
For these reasons, researchers noted that females favor skilled and vigorous males. This suggestion has resulted from a male motor performance, which provides a signal of the male's physical condition.
There's a catch.
"We suggest that such movements may form honest signals of male quality in terms of health, vigour or strength, though this remains to be confirmed," the study concludes, though adding they are in a much stronger position now to conduct further researches on the likely signaling dance mechanisms in human beings.
