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Do the Funky Chicken
Other | Thursday 22nd November 2012 | Olga
Humans have always been intimately connected to music culturally, socially and personally. It is no enigma that music is a form of expression of the soul- what an ingenious statement that would be! Although the ancient origin of the term music implies a unity of melody and dance, we’ve never looked at how the relationship works exactly. So get your head around this: obviously we will shake our limbs differently depending on the beat we are listening to, but WHAT IF….what if the way we move our bodies habitually effects our music preferences??!
Many studies have already strongly suggested that body movements can systematically induce positive as well as negative attitudes toward objects and therefore modify preference judgments in general. For example, participants who performed a positively associated head movement (nodding) evaluated the editorial content of a simulated radio broadcast more positively than those who performed a negatively associated head- shaking movement. Similarly, participants who activated the muscles typically associated with smiling, by holding a pen with their front teeth, judged cartoons to be more humorous than participants whose smiling muscles were inhibited by holding a pen with their lips. Our bodies are basically conditioned to associate certain movements with certain emotions.
So next time your standing on you own, miserable because your friends have convinced you to come out again to a place with music that you just cannot relate to, force a smile on your face and pull out your best move- the funky chicken, I’m sure- you might just begin to like it!
- by Olga Formalnova
