Emotion matters: Different psychophysiological responses to expressive and non-expressive full-body movements

Iranian classical dance as a subject for empirical research: An elusive genre

Dance has entered mainstream empirical research: dance as an experimental stimulus, and dancers as movement experts. Informed by several sources, including primary sources (original, historical documents, and oral reports, such as interviews with practitioners and academic scholars of Iranian dance genres) and secondary sources (research literature), we describe what we label "Iranian classical dance" within this paper as an important resource for empirical research, not only in humanities scholarship but also, and importantly, for empirical aesthetics, emotion psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and affective neuroscience. For this purpose, we (1) describe the aesthetics, characteristics, and history of Iranian classical dance; (2) outline issues of definition and systematization; and (3) give an overview of the cultural complexities and sociopolitical issues regarding Iranian classical dance in the past 40 years, which have shaped its current form. After the political revolution of 1979 (Iranian solar calendar year: 1358), dance in Iran-both as everyday practice and as a cultural heritage-was first forbidden, and now remains heavily restricted. International, interdisciplinary research teams can contribute to safeguarding Iranian classical dance in the future by firmly enshrining it into empirical research on human dance. We outline empirical research perspectives on Iranian classical dance, dataset resources, and expert communities.

Mood induction through imitation of full-body movements with different affective intentions

Theories of human emotion, including some emotion embodiment theories, suggest that our moods and affective states are reflected in the movements of our bodies. We used the reverse process for mood regulation; modulate body movements to regulate mood. Dancing is a type of full-body movement characterized by affective expressivity and, hence, offers the possibility to express different affective states through the same movement sequences. We tested whether the repeated imitation of a dancer performing two simple full-body dance movement sequences with different affective expressivity (happy or sad) could change mood states. Computer-based systems, using avatars as dance models to imitate, offer a series of advantages such as independence from physical contact and location. Therefore, we compared mood induction effects in two conditions: participants were asked to imitate dance movements from one of the two avatars showing: (a) videos of a human dancer model or (b) videos of a robot dancer model. The mood induction was successful for both happy and sad imitations, regardless of condition (human vs. robot avatar dance model). Moreover, the magnitude of happy mood induction and how much participants liked the task predicted work-related motivation after the mood induction. We conclude that mood regulation through dance movements is possible and beneficial in the work context.

Aesthetic and physiological effects of naturalistic multimodal music listening

Compared to audio only (AO) conditions, audiovisual (AV) information can enhance the aesthetic experience of a music performance. However, such beneficial multimodal effects have yet to be studied in naturalistic music performance settings. Further, peripheral physiological correlates of aesthetic experiences are not well-understood. Here, participants were invited to a concert hall for piano performances of Bach, Messiaen, and Beethoven, which were presented in two conditions: AV and AO. They rated their aesthetic experience (AE) after each piece (Experiment 1 and 2), while peripheral signals (cardiorespiratory measures, skin conductance, and facial muscle activity) were continuously measured (Experiment 2). Factor scores of AE were significantly higher in the AV condition in both experiments. LF/HF ratio, a heart rhythm that represents activation of the sympathetic nervous system, was higher in the AO condition, suggesting increased arousal, likely caused by less predictable sound onsets in the AO condition. We present partial evidence that breathing was faster and facial muscle activity was higher in the AV condition, suggesting that observing a performer's movements likely enhances motor mimicry in these more voluntary peripheral measures. Further, zygomaticus ('smiling') muscle activity was a significant predictor of AE. Thus, we suggest physiological measures are related to AE, but at different levels: the more involuntary measures (i.e., heart rhythms) may reflect more sensory aspects, while the more voluntary measures (i.e., muscular control of breathing and facial responses) may reflect the liking aspect of an AE. In summary, we replicate and extend previous findings that AV information enhances AE in a naturalistic music performance setting. We further show that a combination of self-report and peripheral measures benefit a meaningful assessment of AE in naturalistic music performance settings.

The role of the body in the experience of installation art: a case study of visitors' bodily, emotional, and transformative experiences in Tomás Saraceno's "in orbit"

Installation art, with its immersive and participatory character, has been argued to require the use and awareness of the body, which potentially constitute key parts of the artwork's experience and appreciation. Heightened body awareness is even argued to be a key to particularly profound emotional or even transformative states, which have been frequently ascribed to this genre. However, the body in the experience of installation art has rarely been empirically considered. To address this gap, we investigated the body's role in the experience of Tomás Saraceno's in orbit installation. Based on a list of self-report items created from a review of the theoretical literature, we-for the first time-captured (quantitatively and qualitatively): what kind of subjective bodily experiences visitors (N = 230) reported, how these items grouped into clusters (using network science), and how these relate to emotion, art appraisal, and transformative outcomes. Network analysis of the items determined four communities related to "interoception," "presence," "disturbance," and "proprioception." Proprioception (e.g., awareness of balance/movement/weight) turned out to be a significant determinant of art appreciation in our study, and, together with "disturbing" body experiences (feeling awkward/watched/chills), coincided with transformation. We also assessed individual differences in body awareness yet did not find that these moderate those relationships. We suggest future research on installation art based on a more unified assessment of the role of the body in embodied-enactive aesthetics and its relation to the intensity and impact of art experience in general.

A 5-emotions stimuli set for emotion perception research with full-body dance movements

Ekman famously contended that there are different channels of emotional expression (face, voice, body), and that emotion recognition ability confers an adaptive advantage to the individual. Yet, still today, much emotion perception research is focussed on emotion recognition from the face, and few validated emotionally expressive full-body stimuli sets are available. Based on research on emotional speech perception, we created a new, highly controlled full-body stimuli set. We used the same-sequence approach, and not emotional actions (e.g., jumping of joy, recoiling in fear): One professional dancer danced 30 sequences of (dance) movements five times each, expressing joy, anger, fear, sadness or a neutral state, one at each repetition. We outline the creation of a total of 150, 6-s-long such video stimuli, that show the dancer as a white silhouette on a black background. Ratings from 90 participants (emotion recognition, aesthetic judgment) showed that intended emotion was recognized above chance (chance: 20%; joy: 45%, anger: 48%, fear: 37%, sadness: 50%, neutral state: 51%), and that aesthetic judgment was sensitive to the intended emotion (beauty ratings: joy > anger > fear > neutral state, and sad > fear > neutral state). The stimuli set, normative values and code are available for download.

The McNorm library: creating and validating a new library of emotionally expressive whole body dance movements

The ability to exchange affective cues with others plays a key role in our ability to create and maintain meaningful social relationships. We express our emotions through a variety of socially salient cues, including facial expressions, the voice, and body movement. While significant advances have been made in our understanding of verbal and facial communication, to date, understanding of the role played by human body movement in our social interactions remains incomplete. To this end, here we describe the creation and validation of a new set of emotionally expressive whole-body dance movement stimuli, named the Motion Capture Norming (McNorm) Library, which was designed to reconcile a number of limitations associated with previous movement stimuli. This library comprises a series of point-light representations of a dancer's movements, which were performed to communicate to observers neutrality, happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Based on results from two validation experiments, participants could reliably discriminate the intended emotion expressed in the clips in this stimulus set, with accuracy rates up to 60% (chance = 20%). We further explored the impact of dance experience and trait empathy on emotion recognition and found that neither significantly impacted emotion discrimination. As all materials for presenting and analysing this movement library are openly available, we hope this resource will aid other researchers in further exploration of affective communication expressed by human bodily movement.