Science can make you a better dancer - or at least improve your chances of not looking stupid to the opposite sex, say a group of evolutionary psychologists who used 3D motion-capture technology to create uniform avatar figures and identified the key movement areas of the male dancer’s body that influence female perceptions of whether their dance skills are “good” or “bad”.
Apparently it all comes down to neck, trunk, left shoulder and wrist, the variability of movement size of the neck, trunk and left wrist, and the speed of movement of the right knee.
Sounds simple, right? Read on. The research was led by Dr. Nick Neave and grad student Kristofor McCarty at Northumbria University and they say it has identified potential biomechanical differences between “good” and “bad” male dancers. Neave believes that such dance movements may form honest signals of a man’s reproductive quality, in terms of health, vigor or strength (see 2009's 'Men’s physical strength is associated with women’s perceptions of their dancing ability' by Hugill, N., Fink, B., Neave, N.,&Seydel, H. in Personality and Individual Differences, 47: 527-530) and will carry out further research to fully grasp the implications.
Good dancing. Hey, it's the Running Man. Old School! Credit: Northumbria University They filmed 19 male volunteers aged 18-35 with a 3-D camera system as they danced to a basic rhythm. Their real-life movements were mapped onto feature-less, white, gender-neutral humanoid characters, or avatars, so that 35 heterosexual women could rate their dance moves without being prejudiced by each male’s individual level of physical attractiveness.
It seems my irony was too subtle. Rightists have long ridiculed phrases like “recognize their feelings” as being hippie snowflake nonsense. I was throwing the MAGAs’ imprecations back at them.
Please stop playing to the choir. They're already scientifically tone deaf, and you will only make them howl like a depression era microphone in an echo chamber.
China, India, and Russia prioritized the health and well-being of their people over the dubious claims of pseudoscience. I'm glad Trump got out of this boondoggle - for the second time.
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Difficult to get my head round this, but here is a recent video which, if it is correct, suggests why these experiments and others like them are driving at. It certainly tells me a lot more about...
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