January 2009

1. New Wellcome Trust Research Grant
2. Funky Psychology - collaboration with Maverick TV

1. New Wellcome Trust Research Grant

I am delighted to announce that Marina Wallace (art historian, ArtAKT @ CSM), Russell Maliphant (dancer/choreographer and resident artist at Saddlers Wells) and I have been awarded a research grant by the Wellcome Trust to examine people's psychological and physiological response to dance. We will use the grant to create a number of dance pieces and monitor people's psychological and physiological responses to them in different performance spaces. Watch for further updates as the project progresses.

2. Funky Psychology - collaboration with Maverick TV

In a very funky experiment the School of Psychology teamed up with the University of Hertfordshire Student's Union and Maverick TV to turn the Font Nightclub into a research laboratory. Dr Peter Lovatt and his research team wanted to test the hypothesis that the way people dance at a nightclub is influenced by their hormones. From the 800 or so people at the Font 100 were asked to fill in a questionnaire, which asked them about their personality, feelings, sexuality, relationship status and then they allowed themselves to have their fingers and ears measured. The women also provided information about their menstrual cycle. Once the club was hot and sweaty (you could almost taste the pheromones!) participants danced individually on a special dance floor where they were filmed dancing for about 30 seconds.

Two weeks later, after a long snow break, the films of people dancing were shown to a group of 50 people, who were asked to rate the attractiveness of the people dancing. So that people focused only on the dance moves and not facial or clothing features, the videos were blurred out so that all people could see were arms and legs moving in a misty haze.

The findings were as funky as the music. There were three findings. 1. People with high testosterone danced differently to people with low testosterone. 2. These differences in dance style were noticeable by members of the opposite sex and 3. Members of the opposite sex make judgments about how attractive they find someone on the basis of  the way they dance. Women rated the dancing of high testosterone men as more attractive than the dancing of low testosterone men. On the other hand men found the dancing of high estrogen women as more attractive than the dancing of low estrogen women.

The whole study was filmed by Maverick TV for a TV documentary taster called “Love Factually”, which it is hoped will be screened in the near future.

At 1.30 am at the end of filming in the Font the film crew said to me, “What a cool place this is, there’s a really friendly vibe here”.

This unique study was only possible because of the collaboration between Ricky Valdiny at UHSU, The School of Psychology, The Psychology Society, Maverick TV and a band of volunteer research assistants including, Tracy Ashwood, Carine, Lewis, Alex Batts, Sophie Horncastle, Yasmin Bastow and  Caroline Duker.



Tickets for the next Dr Dance Night on Saturday 7th March are selling very well. If you want a ticket please let me know on 07765 250 427.