title: 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.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Department of Arts, Music and Theater Sciences, Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM), Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Edith
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Van Dyck
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Movement and Sports Sciences, Motor Control and Learning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Pieter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Vansteenkiste
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Movement and Sports Sciences, Motor Control and Learning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Matthieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lenoir
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Department of Arts, Music and Theater Sciences, Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM), Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Micheline
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lesaffre
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Department of Arts, Music and Theater Sciences, Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM), Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Leman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003615:Dancing / Q000523:psychology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012938:Social Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires