It is almost impossible for the human body to stand still. We make constant, tiny and almost invisible body movements, also called micro movements, according to research from the University of Oslo. These movements intensify while listening to music.
In her PhD, Agata Zelechowska investigated which kinds of music have the strongest effect on such spontaneous human movement.
“Based on previous studies, we assumed that music with a tempo of around 120 beats per minute (BPM) is most likely to make us move. This is indeed what we found in our studies,” Zelechowska, researcher within music psychology, said.
“It’s my life” and “Bad Romance”
Former research has suggested that 120 BPM is the preferred tempo for dancing. Perhaps it makes sense, when thinking of songs such as Bon Jovi’s “It’s my life”, Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls just want to have fun”, and Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”.
“120 BPM is also a spontaneous tempo for tapping for most people, and the average tempo of human walking,” Zelechowska said.
Humans’ average walking tempo is around two steps a second, adding up to 120 steps a minute, she explained.
Zelechowska worked closely with professor Alexander Refsum Jensenius and postdoc Victor Evaristo Gonzalez Sanchez, all at RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, University of Oslo.
One of their ideas was to organize championships where the person that moved the least would win a gift card worth NOK 1.000 (approximately 95 euros). They used an infrared camera system to capture the participants’ body movement.
Seven minutes of standing still
The research group concluded that humans are simply unable to stand completely still. The head moves several millimetres per second, and significantly more while listening to music. Head movement tells a lot about balance and body sway, according to Zelechowska.
When researching tempo and movement, the researchers asked around 100 participants to stand as still as possible for seven minutes. During that time, there was a mixture of silence, simple drumbeats, and complex drum rhythms.
As found in previous championships, participants were not able to stand completely still, and listening to rhythms increased their movement. The researchers found most movement for rhythms at a tem