A woman’s ovulatory cycle appears to have some influence on her assessment of male dance movements, according to recently published research.
The study, published October 10 in Evolutionary Psychology, found that women at peak fertility viewed male dancers with more “masculine” movements as particularly more attractive compared to less “masculine” dancers.
“Dance is a universal form of human expression,” researchers Tessa Cappelle and Bernhard Fink of the University of Gottingen wrote in their study. “Unlike other forms of behavioral display, dance requires a complex interplay of physical, cognitive, and aesthetic qualities, and may offer an honest cue to an individual’s quality.”
For their research, Cappelle and Fink recorded the dance movements of 79 British men using a 12-camera optical motion capture system.
The optical motion capture system allowed the researchers to create generic virtual characters with the dancers’ movements. The dance movements of these all-grey and featureless humanoid animations were shown to a sample of 37, who rated the masculinity of the virtual dancers.
Another 23 women, aged 20 to 31, then watched the virtual dancers and assessed their attractiveness. Twelve women rated the dancers at times of high fertility in their ovulatory cycle, while 11 women rated the dancers at times of low fertility.
Both women on days of high fertility and women on days of low fertility viewed the more “masculine” dancers as more attractive than the less “masculine” dancers. However, women judged high masculine dancers to be more attractive on days of high fertility than low fertility days.
“It is obvious that high-masculine dancers were judged higher on attractiveness at both high- and low-fertility days, yet an ovulatory cycle shift in attractiveness ratings was observed only for high-masculine dancers and seems to be independent from features such as body symmetry, weight, and height of the dancer,” Cappelle and Fink wrote.
“Future studies should aim to identify biomechanical characteristics that constitute dance masculinity and relate this to women’s short- and long-term mate preferences.”
The findings are line with previous research, which has shown that a woman’s ovulatory cycle can produce subtle changes in her preferences regarding male faces, bodies, voices, and odorat, the researchers said.
