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Researchers Discover Irresistible Dance Moves
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."
the men they found most attractive were those who kept their heads and torsos moving without flailing their arms and legs
Discovering what common sense knew years ago, Today!
Apparently Fail at attracting mates then.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
made my day
we live in our basements. no one will ever see us dance. :)
Where is that picture from? That's just awesome, I clicked on this just to see that photo, the two guys in the background look absolutely horrified at that girl.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
They didn't mention that this research was sponsored by UniLever.
...make sure your avatar dances like the example on the bottom. Otherwise, you're never going to pretend to get laid.
> without flailing their arms and legs
That's all well and good for impressing the ladies, but how then am I supposed to scare of my competition?
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Whatever. I watched the Avatars too. I was attracted to neither. The one with the blue cat people gave me a headache, and the one with the emo bald kid was just sad.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Frankly, I would probably talk to a guy who can pass his hands through his hips. Granted, it is more of a "WTF?" or "How did you do that?" then an actual trying to get to know them.
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
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.
My mother asked me why our generation never came up with any dances. Her generation had the Twist, the Mashed Potato, etc.
I replied that Micheal Jackson killed dance. Nobody else could move like him, so we all gave up and just mosh and twitch randomly.
> without flailing their arms and legs
The avatar in the video with the "Nice Moves!" caption is flailing his arms and legs.
This sort of study might be interesting but it seems clear that the article and one of the quoted anthropologists are assuming that this is a human universal or close to that. But this study was done in a single country with a small group of people. Without a lot more detail it isn't possible to tell if this is an ingrained preference or is culturally driven. Overarching conclusions from interesting but not broad studies like this give ev psych and anthropology a bad name.
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.
A jump to the left, and then a step to the right. With your hands on your hips, bring your knees in tight...
What, no analysis of social dancing? Ya know, dancing with girls? With a lead and a follow?
I guess that kind of research will have to wait for a scientist willing to ask a girl to dance... might take a while.
You can't take the sky from me...
Being a trendy virtual avatar, this will be very useful to me. Maybe sometime they'll have the women looking at actual guys, so the humans can get some benefit from this too.
How to score chicks
1) Cut off own arms and legs; leave head connected.
2) Flail
3) Commence to tapping ass
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Arms at your sides, 90-degree angles. Don't need no pizza, they got food there. Don't bite your lip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py5qAH7wELY
So, every woman in the group found the dull head-bob most attractive, or most of the women found it attractive? All it takes is one woman for it to be attractive to for passing on the genes.
How much of that is in our genes vs how much is in fact cultural? The dance of 500, 1000 or 10000 years ago was probably considered irresistible at their own time and boring now.
Probably is just culture what makes things (dance moves, clothing, hair styles or whatever) irresistible or not. Maybe is not just physical fitness what is being seen there, but also ability to perform or create a meme. "Functional" attractiveness of the opposite sex has changed with culture too
Imagine for a second that you're a woman getting drilled away by a perfect mate, how much of that guy are you going to see? Pretty much just his torso, head, and arms, right? That would explain why the legs are unimportant in teh decision making process.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
So, if i have crabs women will find me more attractive? That's a relief because i'm not much of a dancer, easier to let them do the work!
Just like talking less if you're stupid and talking more if you have something to say is a good idea.
Stupid people usually have a lot to say.
who are you to tell techno-viking he can't dance?
They're using their grammar skills there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc9VOXSH9Pg an ad for beer.
As TFA says, they didn't show them the actual people, they showed them a CGI version of the dance moves that the people had carried out, put together using motion capture.
My Journal
No wonder doing The Robot never got me L8d.
Table-ized A.I.
The good dancer is all over the place. Obviously a better dancer. Couldn't this be summed up by saying women like men who don't suck at dancing?
you got me. i fail at doing the internetz.
dumber people are doing harder things everyday
... dance classes all across the country are filled up with engineers, programmers, ...
...than the African Anteater Mating Ritual? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxIrQPffSIg
Discussion thread including math for why heavier objects fall faster because of earth gravity (normally imperceptible except with massive objects):
http://iopscience.iop.org/0143-0807/8/2/006
How quantum mechanics says that heavy objects fall faster:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=39234
In any case, whether heavy objects fall faster than light ones is tangential to the story. Many studies are wrong, some are pointless, but most have some relation to objective reality even if they can only simulate or deal with analagous cases. In order to meet my biological goals, I now know not to flail my arms and legs, so the study has value to me.
has revealed that it doesn't matter if I look like a spaz on the dance floor, once I lick my eyebrows I have my pick of women!
And Al Gore the least sexy?
Brazilian dance scientists have ALREADY researched this field to its pinnacle. After creating the Macarena and the Lambada, their Magnum Opus was the "Penetrada". This is a dance so sinfully erotic, it makes sex look like church!
Old Guy Dances to Lady Gaga."
This guy shows styles exemplary of moving mostly your legs and arms and not your head or torso. He does some stuff reminiscent of pop and lock and he does some mohawk stuff. So is he putting the ladies off? Why was he considered so popular, just because he's moving at all, even still alive at that age? People that old are usually dead, right? Is that what's going on, what the fuck? I thought he was just popular. I thought that shit was "cool", more "sexy". People said the old guy's sexy! Clear it up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pEho5tqwfE [youtube.com]
--
'Free'. . . as in the reign of Satan.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
These two are 27 years old, and are the current innovators. Not Choreographed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGP8CEklpGg
Again, not choreographed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkcHzqr8a34
Yes, these are professional West Coast dancers that compete in a circuit 30 weeks a year or so.
-Rick
Researchers Discover Irresistible Dance Moves
Surely there's a missing footnote which reads "except when performed by bearded, potbellied programmers?" :P
crabs and hummingbirds
Dancing gives you crabs!
I always wondered why I never got laid when I went to bars and did the Chicken Dance. It's all so clear now.
I'm bboy360, it's important to have a good bboy name. Breakdancing gets all the chicks
"Dancing makes women horny and men tired."
-Dad
According to this article, it is now optimal not to move either your feet or your hands when you dance.
FTA FTW.
It could just mean that the guys who used more legs and arms were just exposing their #fail more than the ones who didn't.
If you did this same test with professional dancers, how would it come out?
Obviously Jews wrote this article, because only those that can't flail their arms around are these fat short Jews that wrote this Slashvertisement about dance maneuvers.
If people danced like Techno Viking, then that would cut money out of the Jews enterprises of Nintendo Wii, aerobics companies, and clothes manufacturers.
So we determine the dance moves women most like by showing them avatars of booty shaking frat boys? What next, determine what art they like by having them choose between stick figures of 4 year olds? I suppose the article had some point to it - it showed what style of incompetent dance women hate less.
I've been social dancing for 15 years, and being the technonerd slashdot type, I naturally have been compulsively analyzing the mechanics and aesthetics of dance. Head carriage is very important, as is posture and body rhythm.
Of course, the "bad robot" was bad. Repetitive, stiff, and with his head down. Doing the Rainman (a reference to a Dustin Hoffman movie, younguns - now get offa my lawn.) The "good robot" has a little body rhythm and fluidity. Other than that, bad news. You don't want your head flopping and lolling all over the place. It is not a good look to have your elbows plastered to your sides, with your arms flailing about beyond them. Little flat footed kickies to the side - what the hell was that? The only thing missing on the Avatar was the White Man's overbite.
What women want degenerates into a common knowledge problem. Just read this thread, it illustrates what any sensible woman already knows: the incredible male fascination with easy ways to get laid without doing any real emotional work.
Even if the ruse works, you'll likely end up with the kind of chick who is easily duped by a shallow ruse. The pussy might be good in the short term, but soon you'll have to gnaw your arm off.
To really understand what women want involves tensor calculus: it's a varying function of what the women currently has. The tensor system has fairly strong immunity to fixed points. It tends to loop through sex, babies, parenthood, graduation, sex, babies, parenthood, etc.
As soon as you achieve one of these, your emotions migrate to the next stage. There's no gloriously horny fixed point.
Sometimes you find a woman who is so disillusioned with life, she gets off the bus. She's often found in the company of a man who is sexually exhausted (beyond caring), and disillusioned with disillusioned. Who knew that caring about life makes a woman more attractive?
The other term that confuses matters is that a women evaluates what she knows about you differently than what you've stated about yourself explicitly, even if these are the same thing. This tends to happen when a woman consciously knows better, but subconsciously continues to hope.
That's where real emotional work enters the picture. To have any real success with women, you have to be able to navigate the simultaneous equations. Sometimes you wander into a cul de sac, where there's no solution at all. Then you have to jump bravely from one ledge to another. This involves the use of that other male bone, the backbone. Anakin Skywalker is not your role model.
If the relationship has any emotional equity, the backbone move is termed "conflict resolution". Many relationships suck at this. A quick test for sucking at conflict resolution is when your typical relationship goes directly from great sex to Armageddon.
These days, for people who live in urban areas, there are a lot of fish in the sea. Nevertheless, the Armageddon cycles eventually build up, until you find yourself sitting around in your underwear watching Seinfeld reruns.
And you still don't know what women want.
but I'd suspect I'd end up seeing this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&ob=av3e
Suddenly, Rick got it right.
as a recovering deadhead with zydecosis, i have rediscovered the pleasure of partner dancing (altho the purists in the cajun/zydeco crowd say i don't know how 2 dance;-)
but there's nothing like 2 people having a conversation about the music in motion & touch:-) plus it's gr8 aerobic exercise;-)
getting back to this research: it seems to back up the fundies' proscription of dancing as the vertical expression of a horizontal desire;-}
The dance moves of the successful guy, are exactly how my brother dances. He hogs the dance floor, he's coordinated, he's fit and good looking. The girls love him... and the guys, since he is a gay figure skater. But the point being, it's about being confident, or in my brother's case, narcissistic. He even tried to pick himself up, in the mirror at a gay nightclub, one night.
that misses the point."
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/09/are_people_attracted_to_good_d.html
"If this study is valid at all, then it is only valid only for modern, culturally created attractiveness. It is identical to saying "women prefer men with body hair because it signals virility." When was this? The only people who find 1970s pornstars attractive are 1960s pornstars, and communists, which are the same thing."