There is a close relationship between how we feel and how we move. We all know the situation: when we’re happy, our movements, like how we walk and gesture are very different from when we’re—say—sad or angry. But does it also work the other way round? Can certain ways of moving affect how we feel? Can we make ourselves happier—or sadder—by the way we move?
An interdisciplinary research team led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in collaboration with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, the University of Glasgow, UK, and the Technical University of Munich, Germany, has made a significant finding regarding the impact of dance movements on emotional states. The results have recently been published in the British Journal of Psychology.