The people next to the bar are clutching their drinks tightly. A little closer to the dance floor, people are swaying to the beat and nodding their heads, while under the disco ball others are letting loose, showing creativity and coordination -- or at least trying to.
If one is to believe psychologist Peter Lovatt, three factors influence how confidently an individual moves on the dance floor -- and how attractive the other gender finds the performance. Those factors are age, gender and genes.
Lovatt, a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire near London who is widely known as "Dr. Dance," bases his conclusions on rigorous field work. In January 2009, Lovatt visited a nightclub at his university -- for purely scientific reasons, of course. His mission was to find out which style of dancing was most attractive to the opposite sex, and why.
First of all, his students measured clubbers' ring and index fingers. The relationship between the two fingers is believed to be related to how much testosterone an individual was exposed to in the womb. If the ring finger is longer than the index finger, it suggests a high level of prenatal testosterone. (and every man that just read that sentence is right now looking at his hand)
Lovatt and his team observed the dance floor closely and took certain dancers aside for a solo performance. Those selected groovers were then filmed for 30 seconds on a separate dance floor which was, according to Lovatt, "just as lively and noisy as the main dance floor." Then the team headed back to the lab with their videos.
Lovatt then applied a filter to the footage so that the dancers could only be seen in silhouette, which meant that any viewer had to focus solely on their movements. He showed these films to students, who had to rate the dancers on a five-point scale from "very attractive" to "very unattractive."
The results showed that women gave the highest attractiveness ratings to men with the highest levels of prenatal testosterone. The men with the lowest testosterone in turn got the lowest attractiveness ratings. "Men can communicate their testosterone levels through the way they dance," Lovatt told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "And women understand it -- without noticing it."
Subtle Is Better
The men who got the female students hot under the collar danced with large movements which were "complexly coordinated." But it's a fine line between hot and not, however: Those men who made big moves but who were less coordinated came across as dominant alpha males -- and were unlikely to win women's hearts. The researchers also found that the size and complexity of the dance moves decreased in parallel with testosterone levels.
In women, the link between dancing style and testosterone levels were similar -- but the reaction of men was just the opposite. Dancers with high levels of testosterone moved more parts of their body, with their movements being somewhat uncoordinated, while those with lower testosterone made more subtle movements, especially with their hips. The male students found the latter style most appealing.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/zei ... 38,00.html