According to a study, people who dance are less neurotic than the people around them. They are also more tolerable, open and outgoing than people who don’t dance. According to the researchers, both apply to both amateur and professional dancers, as shown in a study led by the Frankfurt Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Empirical Aesthetics.
The research results were recently published in the journal “Personality and Individual Differences”. The MPI staff evaluated data from 5,435 people from Sweden and 574 people from Germany. The five personality traits examined were openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, which were determined using an extensive questionnaire.
Similar results for musicians
There were similar results for musicians’ personalities. According to a previous study, they are friendlier and more open to other people than non-musicians. According to the MPI, this was in principle also confirmed for dancers in the current study.
However, the researchers also found an interesting difference between the two groups: unlike musicians, dancers are not more neurotic, but – on the contrary – less neurotic than people who do not dance.
High level of extroversion
Overall, both dancers and singers had high levels of extraversion in their personalities – “which may be due to the fact that one’s own body is used as a means of expression in dancing and singing,” lead author Julia F. Christensen reported. “This means that they are in a more socially exposed situation than someone who expresses themselves through an instrument, for example.”
The researchers also found the first evidence that there might be personality differences between dancers of different dance styles. People who swing dance seem to be even less neurotic than, for example, Latin and ballroom dancers.
According to the MPI, such assumptions still need to be confirmed with larger amounts of data. The research should also continue for another reason: the researchers would like to expand their research into dancers’ personalities to other cultures and dance styles.
Source: Krone
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