Recognizing Induced Emotions of Happiness and Sadness from Dance Movement

Abstract

Recent research revealed that emotional content can be successfully decoded from human dance movement. Most previous studies made use of videos of actors or dancers portraying emotions through choreography. The current study applies emotion induction techniques and free movement in order to examine the recognition of emotional content from dance. Observers (N = 30) watched a set of silent videos showing depersonalized avatars of dancers moving to an emotionally neutral musical stimulus after emotions of either sadness or happiness had been induced. Each of the video clips consisted of two dance performances which were presented side-by-side and were played simultaneously; one of a dancer in the happy condition and one of the same individual in the sad condition. After every film clip, the observers were asked to make forced-choices concerning the emotional state of the dancer. Results revealed that observers were able to identify the emotional state of the dancers with a high degree of accuracy. Moreover, emotions were more often recognized for female dancers than for their male counterparts. In addition, the results of eye tracking measurements unveiled that observers primarily focus on movements of the chest when decoding emotional information from dance movement. The findings of our study show that not merely portrayed emotions, but also induced emotions can be successfully recognized from free dance movement.

Dance on cortex: enhanced theta synchrony in experts when watching a dance piece

“…Not only portrayed emotions but also induced emotions can be successfully recognized from dance movement (Camurri et al ., ; Van Dyck et al ., ). In addition, music has been shown to evoke strong emotions, and even chills, among musicians and laymen in several experiments (Blood & Zatorre, ; Brattico et al ., ; Salimpoor et al ., ; Koelsch, for a review).…”

“…The recognition of the emotions expressed by the whole body is improved in full‐light display when compared to a point light display (Ross et al ., ). In addition, emotions are better recognized when interpreted by female dancers (Van Dyck et al ., ). Thus, the multimodal performance of the real female dancer is a unique condition to evoke emotional processes in the brain.…”

Do free dance movements communicate how we feel? Investigating emotion recognition in dance

“…In Van Dyck's et al (2014) study, the recordings of the dancers were presented to participants in a forcedchoice emotion recognition experiment (participants choose between side-by-side dance recordings and decided which one was happy, and which was sad). It tested the odds ratio of observers reporting the emotion induced in the dancer correctly and found recognition of the correct emotion was higher than recognition of the incorrect emotion.…”

“…The aim of the studies presented here are to understand whether dance movements communicate the emotions of lay dancers. Through employing a similar research design to that of Van Dyck's et al (2014), we first evaluated if their findings could be replicated with a different participant population. Furthermore, we tested additionally if there are differences between recognising happiness and sadness from dance movements recorded in sad or happy conditions using an open response format (which does not force participants to choose between either happy or sad emotions like in the original study).…”

The Communication of Emotions in Dance

“…Significant differences in corporeal articulation were especially obtained for movement of the hands. In a succeeding study, the recognition of induced emotional content from dance was examined (Van Dyck, Vansteenkiste, Lenoir, Lesaffre, & Leman, 2014). Observers viewed a set of silent videos showing depersonalized avatars performing the dance movements that were recorded in the previous experiment.…”