How do other people move you?
A Dose of Dance Psychology #1
Imagine yourself dancing alone. Now imagine yourself dancing with another person. How much of the way you move comes from you, and how much emerges between you and the other person?
In this week’s Dose of Dance Psychology, we’re going to look at this question with a small dose of dance, a simple real-world practical experiment, and by looking at a published research study by Carlson, Burger and Toiviainen (2018).
Let’s start by learning a short sequence of movement.
A Small Dose of Dance
Learn the movement and repeat it a few times. You can perform it seated or standing and make it as small or expansive as feels right for you.
For now, simply become familiar with the movement. There is no need to give it a particular character or meaning.
A simple real-world practical experiment
Method
First, dance the dose by yourself.
Imagine that nobody is watching. Allow yourself to move in whatever way feels natural. You can dance it in silence, or you can dance it to any piece of music. Dance the dose on repeat, or intersperse it with some freestyle groove.
Now ask another person to join you. Play the same music and dance the dose together.
You can both begin with the eight-count movement, but you do not have to remain perfectly synchronised or perform it identically. Allow each other’s presence and movement to become part of the experience.
Do not discuss in advance how you are going to dance. Just begin.
If possible, dance the dose with a different person.
If nobody is available, dance it twice in your imagination. The first time, imagine dancing with someone you know well. The second time, imagine dancing with someone you have never met (perhaps imagine dancing it with a public or historic figure). This is not the same as dancing with a real partner, but it may still reveal something interesting about your expectations.
What did you notice?
Did the movement remain the same, or did another person’s presence change it?
If you danced with two different people, did each person bring out a different version of the dance?
There is no correct response. Moving more is not better than moving less. The purpose is simply to notice how another person may become part of the way you move.
Movement in everyday life
During this week, notice how you walk and move when you’re walking or moving alone. Then notice how you walk and move when you’re with other people, such as when you’re moving with friends, family, or colleagues. What, if any, are the differences?
Carlson, Burger and Toiviainen (2018).
In 2018, Emily Carlson, Birgitta Burger and Petri Toiviainen investigated whether people move differently when they dance alone and when they dance with another person.
52 adults took part in a motion-capture experiment. The researchers attached 21 reflective markers to each participant and recorded their movements.
Each person danced: alone, with one partner, with a second partner and with a third partner.
The researchers measured acceleration across the whole body and separately examined movement of the head and hands.
Carlson et al. wanted to examine three possible influences on movement:
The dancer: Do I tend to move in a similar way whoever I am dancing with?
The partner: Does this particular person produce a similar response in everyone?
The relationship: Does something unique happen when this particular person and I dance together?
What did they find?
Participants generally moved their hands more when dancing with another person than when dancing alone.
The most intriguing result concerned the relationship between dancers. The unique combination of two people accounted for more of the effect on a person’s movement than a partner’s general tendency to make everyone else move in a particular way.
In other words, there did not appear to be certain people who consistently made everyone move more or less. Instead, movement was influenced by what emerged within each particular pairing.
The researchers also found a small association between self-reported empathy and hand movement. Such that, people with higher empathy scores varied their hand movements more when dancing with different partners. Perhaps they were empathetically absorbing their dance partners movement more?
The results of the current study suggest that the presence of another person can indeed affect our movement to music, and that the unique characteristics of a given pair of people have the greatest influence over how our movements change.
What might this mean?
Your movement may reflect your body, personality, experience and response to the music, but it may also be shaped by the person sharing the movement experience with you.
People’s movements can change in the presence of another dancer, and some of those changes may be particular to the unique combination of the two people involved.
Research reference
Carlson, E., Burger, B., & Toiviainen, P. (2018). Dance like someone is watching: A Social Relations Model study of music-induced movement. Music & Science, 1, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204318807846
Responses