37 straight women. 19 male volunteers. What happened next?

September 9, 2010 by
Filed under: Social Brain 

George Bernard Shaw famously described dancing as “a vertical expression of a horizontal desire”, but it seems that some express this desire better than others.

Today’s Guardian reports on a recent psychological study which indicates that when you strip away appearance, personality, dress sense and eye contact, women express a marked preference for men who dance with their whole bodies, including their torsos and heads, and not merely their arms and legs.

Quite a cute study, but a small sample and a fairly unsurprising outcome. Will Brown, a psychologist at the University of East London is suitably tentative:

“Flexing the trunk while dancing may be attractive, but we need to show it is indicative of a better quality male using an independent measure of biological quality.”

What?!

Better quality male? Biological Quality? Trunk?

A little respect, please…

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Comments

  • James

    Where’s the article?

    • Jonathan Rowson

      Click on the ‘Guardian’ hyperlink near the beginning to see the article, and click on the hyperlink ‘dance’ to see the moves in action.

  • James

    Where's the article?

  • Jonathan Rowson

    Click on the 'Guardian' hyperlink near the beginning to see the article, and click on the hyperlink 'dance' to see the moves in action.

  • Ben Toombs

    Is Will Brown’s quote one long euphamism? Can’t quite decide… But if you liked that, you’ll love this from last weekend’s Guardian. The lengths the researchers went to to ensure the study was ‘fair’ are truly impressive.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/03/classicalmusicandopera