The movie "Warm" is an inspirational movie, enthusiastic young people enter the street dance troupe, meet dance masters with different personalities, and it is "love to dance" that brings them together. As soon as the music starts, people will let go of everything, dance, and finally love brings success. Many children jump happily when they hear music, why do people hear and dance, and why is dancing inspiring?
Many people find people who can dance attractive, and many people also learn to dance to attract the opposite sex. Some researchers believe that this is because body symmetry is an indicator of health, and it is generally believed that those with symmetrical bodies dance better. The researchers specially selected Jamaicans who attach great importance to both male and female dance, recorded the movements of dancers through motion capture technology, excluded the influence of clothing, appearance, expression, etc., and then let the audience judge the dancing ability of the dancers, and found that the audience preferred those dancers with symmetrical bodies, and the female audience's evaluation of male dancers was particularly affected by symmetry. In a separate study, German researchers also found that female audiences preferred strong male dancers. In terms of sexual selection, people prefer people with good physical fitness, that is, good genes, so they prefer people who can show good genes in dancing. In the animal kingdom, there are many animals that attract the opposite sex through exaggerated body movements, as if dancing, but they do not sway to music or rhythm. Researchers at Harvard University found more than 5,000 videos of animals "dancing" from YouTobe, and the analysis found that only 33 of the animals were swaying to music, except for an elephant (which the researchers believe may have been tricked by the trainer), and the rest were songbirds. In fact, for quite some time, scientists thought that dancing (moving to the melody of music) was a uniquely human ability. Neither cats nor dogs, these good friends of humans, or gorillas, close relatives of humans, dance with the music. Only songbirds (like some parrots) sway to the beat just like humans: when listening to songs, they speed up or slow down their movements as the rhythm changes. Researchers think this may be a rare ability in the animal kingdom: a byproduct of mimicking sound, requiring a close connection between auditory and motor neural circuits.
In addition to hearing the melody and dancing, we may also dance along with it. In social situations, we subconsciously imitate the people around us, which psychologists call the "chameleon effect." In the early studies, the participants took turns describing a photo in pairs, in fact, one of them was the experimenter's accomplice, he had to make a series of actions very naturally, such as smiling, stretching the face, cocking the legs, touching the face, etc., the real subjects often followed suit, but when leaving, most people did not notice the other party's small movements, and no one felt that they imitated each other's movements.
We may inadvertently imitate each other's swinging movements. But more often than not, people's imitation is conscious. For example, learning to dance often requires the use of "mirrors", which may be to observe oneself in a real mirror, or to imitate the movements of others. The researchers proposed that the "mirroring" technique could cultivate empathy and promote "mirror neuron" activity in the brain. Mirror neurons are a group of nerve cells located in the premotor cortex, and when we see the behavior of others, mirror neurons are activated, as if they are doing the same behavior, and when we see others doing the same action as us, they are also activated. Mirror neurons play an important role in survival and development, allowing us to learn to imitate the behavior and language of others, acquire new skills, and help us understand the intentions of others and communicate with others. Mirror neurons are also closely related to social cognition and empathy, understanding the emotions and behaviors of others, and helping us to better know and understand ourselves by comparing our own behavior with others' behavior.
People release themselves in dancing and express emotions in dancing. The audience can also experience different emotions from the dancers' performances. Hejmadi is a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and an excellent Indian dancer. She used dance to express 10 different emotions (including anger, shame, fear, sadness, shyness, curiosity, etc.) and videotaped, not only did dance experts agree with the emotions she conveyed in her dance, but students were able to correctly state the emotions expressed in most cases.
Dancing is easy to create an emotional connection between people and people. For example, in the pas de deux, there is a lot of physical contact, the simplest is holding hands. Studies have found that holding hands can reduce stress levels, reduce anxiety, relieve pain, and people often grab the hand of the person next to us when they are afraid, which makes us feel less scared and safer. Holding hands can also promote the secretion of oxytocin, bringing the relationship between two people closer. In fact, just by touching the photos of their fingers, many people can tell which are couples and which are just strangers.
Many ancient frescoes record primitive tribes dancing together. To survive, primitive people had to collaborate, and dancing together required collaboration. The biggest feature of group dance is "Qi", that is, the participants have to complete the same movements at the same time. Synchronisation between people promotes group relationships, and members perceive more in common with each other, have a more positive attitude towards each other, like and trust each other, and are willing to help each other. In one study, for example, the researchers first asked participants to walk around the campus, some in unison, some freely, and in subsequent experiments, participants who walked in unison were more likely to make decisions that would benefit the collective good.
When we do something at the same time with others, we bring each other together and expand the boundaries of "ourselves", merging ourselves and others into a whole: we are part of the collective, and the collective is part of ourselves. Without complicated dancing, clapping hands together has a similar effect, we will feel that those who clap with ourselves are more intimate, so in the dance field, not only the performers dancing together, but also the audience who applauded in unison in the audience became part of the "warm", and even the audience in front of the screen could not help but dance their bodies and boil their blood.