Humans
PUBLISHED
Along with all the other nightmares that come with dating, the question of whether the person you are doing it with actually likes you is certainly up there in terms of sources of stress. In one study which set people speed dating and monitored the results, researchers found an unusual sign to look out for; how they are swaying their bodies.
You don't need IFLScience to tell you that throughout life, we give away a lot of unconscious signals through our body language. Smiling all the way to the eyes, for example, can show familiarity, whilst clutching your stomach and rubbing it might indicate you are in severe need of a poop, if my own children are anything to go by.
As well as this, how well your own body movements sync up with the people around you can tell onlookers a few things about your relationship. Researchers from McMaster's LIVELab were initially interested in looking into "interpersonal synchronization" as people's movements start to sync up when performing a simple task.
But with the equipment at hand already, in 2018 the team turned their attention to speed dating.
“We don’t usually look at romantic relationships,” lead author Andrew Chang explained in a statement at the time.
“What we were interested in at the beginning was how people work together to do something simple, like move an object. From a previous study, we developed a tool that can measure how individuals cooperate with each other based on their body language – more specifically, their body sway.”
Chang and the team attempted to find out whether it was possible to tell whether potential romantic partners were interested in each other by analyzing their body sway, and how well their bodies swayed in sync with each other.
"When people coordinate joint actions, have a conversation, have a psychotherapy session or play music in an ensemble, their body sways tend to be coupled," the team explained in their paper.
"Although hand gestures and other types of movement can play a role in interpersonal interactions, body sway is a global measurement of an individual’s actions that continues over time; furthermore, it is less affected by task-specific movement requirements than, for example, hand or arm gestures."
The team set their speed daters up with motion capture markers to keep track of their movements, whilst setting them on their four minute dates, which were also filmed with infrared cameras. As well as this, the participants were asked to fill in various questionnaires asking them whether they were looking for a long-term relationship, and whether they wished to see the other participants for a second date.
All that was left to do (ok, apart from a few other tidbits) was to control for how hot the participants were; attempting to control for factors like one person being unreasonably attractive, and skewing the results.
"We found that directional body sway coupling predicted interest in long-term, but not short-term relationships," the team wrote. "Specifically, participants had higher interest in a long-term relationship if their body sway dynamics better predicted their partner’s body sway, even when controlling for perceived physical attractiveness."
The team was intrigued that the effect only predicted interest in long-term relationships.
"We propose that directional body sway coupling reflects the quality of inter-partner communication, which reveals the degree of compatible personality characteristics," they added. "This is consistent with our music ensemble studies, in which directional body sway coupling reflected directional interpersonal communication and predicted the quality of ensemble musical performances."
The team also explored whether playing different types of music could encourage this coupled body sway, and affect further romantic interest in the participants. At half the speed dating events, participants listened to mellow music including Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, whilst the other half listened to "high-groove" including Beyonce’s “Nasty Girl,” Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and LaBelle’s version of “Lady Marmalade". Whilst the difference was slight, it was still there.
“The percentage of people of people who listened to the low-groove music who wanted to date again was 45 per cent, while the percentage of high-groove listeners who wanted a second date was 50 per cent,” Chang added.
“It’s not the strongest factor in the world, but it indicates that music that encourages coordinated movement can lead to a greater feeling of connection and a greater desire for a second date.”
The study is published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
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