Dance, Dance Revolution

Bad news for men who shuffle their feet on the dance floor—such dance moves are not sexy. It might seem that taking the conservative route will help lure a lady, but researchers found that women prefer men who dance flamboyantly and move their necks, heads, torsos, and arms much like Carlton danced on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

"When you go out to clubs people have an intuitive understanding of what makes a good and bad dancer," Nick Neave told the BBC. "What we've done for the very first time is put those things together with a biometric analysis so we can actually calculate very precisely the kinds of movements people focus on and associate them with women's ratings of male dancers."

Neave and his colleagues at Northumbria University in Great Britain attached motion sensors to male dancers and captured their movements with 12 cameras like they would if they were creating a CGI character (such as the Gollum). After recording each dancer's moves, the researchers created an "avatar," basically a blue cartoon man who danced like the actual participants. (They created the avatars so women would not be swayed by the men's appearances.) Women watched the blue men dancing and rated how attractive they were based on their dance skills.

Women found men who moved their heads, torsos, and arms more attractive than men who simply shuffled their feet, a move the researchers call "Dad dancing." (I'm not familiar with the "Dad dance;" does anyone else know it?) Neave took blood samples from all the dancers, finding that dad dancers were also less healthy than sexy dancers. So men, it might be time to break out the Carlton dance—at least for your health.