Fans of the sitcom “Seinfeld” are all too aware of character Elaine Benes’ awful dance moves. A study published last Thursday in Scientific Reports shows how we can all avoid the embarrassing fate of being viewed as a real-world Elaine at parties.
According to Vice, psychologists in the United Kingdom have figured out the rhythmic permutations that are found most attractive in females on the dance floor. The shrinks’ findings appear in Scientific Reports.
As explained by Vice, “The researchers used motion-capture technology to track the women’s movements and then mapped those onto digital avatars, like something out of a rudimentary video game.” Men and women watched the avatars and weighed in on which digital dancing queens were most appealing. According to the findings of Scientific Reports, the most desirable dancers had swinging hips, asymmetrical thigh moves and wildly uneven arm movements.
In other words they conformed to timeless advice: Dance like nobody’s watching. Researchers maintain that the swinging hips signal fertility.
A similar study was conducted to help guys figure out what they need to do when the rhythms get heavy. As reported awhile back in Popular Science, 19 men were drafted to move to German dance music and they, too, were then digitized. Opinions on their booty-shaking were published in Royal Society’s Biology Letters. To score chicks at the disco, guys, keep your upper body in motion, take up a lot of space (the dance-floor equivalent of man-spreading on the subway) and mix up your moves.
Psychologist Nick Neave, who was involved in running the study, figures that his findings are potent. “Men all over the world will be interested to know what moves they can throw to attract women,” he told Popular Science. “If a man knows what the key moves are, he can get some training and improve his chances of attracting a female through his dance style.”
Crank it up, Mr. DJ!
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