Study highlights the movements in people’s gait that give away most about their emotional state
A long face is not the only sign that someone is down in the dumps. How people walk is revealing too, particularly the swing of the arms and legs, researchers say.
Scientists asked volunteers to guess people’s emotions from video clips of them walking and found that bigger swings portrayed more aggression while smaller swings implied fear and sadness.
Tweaking the videos to make the swings longer or shorter made the emotions easier to infer, according to the study, suggesting that the coordinated swing of the arms and legs was a key feature people picked up on.
The work expands the list of cues that humans draw on to make speedy assessments of people’s emotions, and highlights the specific movements that convey most about the range of feelings people have, the scientists say.
