by Most people enjoy dancing at concerts, but what factors influence the urge to dance? A new study has found that sound frequencies below human hearing can make people dance more. And people might not even know it’s happening.
“All of our tact is mediated by the vestibular system, but I don’t think anyone has really validated that effectively,” he said Jonathan Cannon (opens in new tab)an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience and behavior McMaster University (opens in new tab) in Ontario, Canada, who was not involved in the study. (The vestibular system mediates our sense of balance and posture.)
The experiment took place during a concert by the electronic music duo Orphx at a place called The LIVELab (opens in new tab) – a research excellence center at McMaster University specifically designed for the study of music and dance.
A total of 133 people attended the concert, and 66 participants agreed to take part in the study. During the performance, participants wore headbands with motion capture markers to detect head movements. Before and after the show they graduated questionnaires (opens in new tab) who asked about their perception of the music and the sensations they experienced.
While Orphx was performing, the researchers switched very low frequency (VLF) tones (8–37 Hz) through the speakers on and off every 2.5 minutes throughout the 55-minute concert. The head movement speed was then calculated for both time periods.
The researchers found that participants moved 11.8% more when the VLFs were on than when these subaudible frequencies were off. The researchers also noted that in the post-concert questionnaire, participants responded that they felt the urge to move their body in part to the bass frequencies at the concert. But the participants also noted that they had similar feelings at other concerts. Based on the results, the researchers concluded that dance intensity can be increased by VLFs without a person’s consciousness. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nov. 7 Current Biology (opens in new tab).
This isn’t the first time scientists have suggested that factors outside of direct human awareness can influence behavior; For example, in the 1980s there were concerns about the impact of subliminal advertising, in which images flickered too fast for us to consciously perceive. Later research found that while humans can perceive such images, they had very little effect on behavior, Live Science previously reported.
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The new study has some limitations. For example, the participants in the concert might have danced more due to the surrounding crowd. “If a few people are aware of the bass and dance more, it can have an amplifying effect in the crowd and you would see a lot of movement from everyone, even though most people aren’t responding to it [the bass] at all,” Canon said.
Cannon also emphasized the effect of touch on movement, noting that the low-frequency sound may have created vibrations that people felt through the ground, which could have affected participants’ movement. “I wouldn’t be surprised if our actual sensations coming off our feet convey that,” he said. One way researchers could prevent this effect would be to use a cement floor. “It’s not great for the dancers, but it would at least control how much vibration is getting through the floor to them,” he explained.
Cannon suggested that further research could focus on individuals to eliminate the crowd effect, noting that he would also be interested in doing this research with people who are deaf or hard of hearing. “I think investigating whether people who can’t reproduce sounds at all are affected by these low-frequency noises would be one way to see if it’s really bypassing parts of the auditory system,” he said.
