Save the Last Dance for Me: Dynamic Cues and Social Perception

社会感知是人类对社会关系做出决定的过程。对吸引力、热情、能力和许多其他社会因素的感知几乎发生在所有的社会互动中。我们遇到的人总是根据他们对我们的行为、行为和外表的看法来做决定。之前关于影响社会对吸引力、温暖度和能力的认知的因素的研究严重依赖于使用静态线索作为刺激，比如图片。然而，在实际的社会环境中，感知并不是基于静态刺激发生的，相反，社会感知强烈依赖于动态线索，如走路和跳舞。这项跨学科研究旨在研究动态线索（如走路和跳舞）与静态线索（如图片）在吸引力、温暖度和能力的社会认知中的作用。这项研究将使用动作捕捉技术来捕捉参与者走路和跳舞的动作，这些动作将被用作评分者的刺激因素，评分者将对这些刺激因素的吸引力、温暖度和能力进行评分。选择步行作为研究对象，是因为它是影响社会感知的社会情境中最常见的动态因素。跳舞提供了另一个悖论。虽然两性的二态性通常在面部、声音等方面具有吸引力，但传统上，舞蹈中强调的是优雅和灵巧等女性特质。这个项目将测试性别二态性是否与舞蹈中的吸引力有关，不像其他动态或静态线索；因此，舞蹈是否模糊了男性气质和女性气质之间的区别。

Social Perception is the process by which humans make decisions about social relationships. Theperception of attractiveness, warmth, competence and many other social factors occur in almost allsocial interactions. People we meet are constantly making decisions based on their perception of whatwe do, how we move and look.Previous studies on factors that influence social perceptions made about attractiveness, warmth andcompetence have heavily relied on using static cues as stimuli, like pictures. However, in actual socialsettings, perception does not occur based on static stimuli, instead social perception strongly relies ondynamic cues like walking and dancing.This inter-disciplinary research aims to study the role of dynamic cues like walking and dancing asopposed static cues like pictures, on the social perception of attractiveness, warmth and competence.The research will use motion-capture technology to capture the movements of walking and dancing fromparticipants, which will be used as the stimuli for raters who will rate the stimuli on attractiveness,warmth and competence.Walking is chosen to be studied as it is the most common dynamic factors that are present in socialsituations that affect social perception. Dancing offers a further paradox. While sexual dimorphism isgenerally attractive in terms of the face, voice, etc., traditionally feminine qualities such as grace andfinesse are emphasized in dance. This project will test whether sexual dimorphism is associated withattractiveness in dancing, unlike other dynamic or static cues; hence whether dance blurs thedistinctions between masculinity and femininity.