Preferred Dance Tempo: Does Sex or Body Morphology influence how we groove?

In two experiments participants tuned a drum machine to their preferred dance tempo. Measurements of height, shoulder width, leg length, and weight were taken for each participant, and their sex recorded. Using a multiple regression analysis, height and leg length combined was found to be the best predictors of preferred dance tempo in Experiment 1. A second experiment, where males and females were matched in terms of height, resulted in no significant correlation between sex and preferred dance tempo. In the matched sample, height was found to be the single best predictor but with a relatively small effect size. These results are consistent with a biomechanical “resonance” model of dancing.