Many people find themselves unable to resist moving their bodies to the thumping beat of hip-hop, electronic, or funk music, but may feel less desire to dance when listening to a highly syncopated type of music, like free jazz.

Researchers interested in understanding how the structure of this music affects our desire to dance have studied the role of rhythm in eliciting pleasure and body movement. They used a web-based survey to investigate the relationship between rhythmic complexity and self-ratings of wanting to move and pleasure. Over 60 participants from all over the world listened to funk drum-breaks with varying degrees of syncopation. Participants then rated the extent to which they made volunteers want to move, as well as how much pleasure they experienced.

Based on the results, the authors suggest that listening to rhythmic drum patterns with a medium degree of syncopation elicited a greater desire to move and the most pleasure, particularly for participants who enjoyed dancing to music regardless. Researchers suggest that listeners enjoy a balance between rhythmic predictability and complexity in music. The authors posit that the relationship between body movement, pleasure, and syncopation is important in people’s responses to groove music.

The study has just been published in PLOS ONE:

Maria A. G. Witek, Eric F. Clarke, Morten L. Kringelbach, Mikkel Wallentin og Peter Vuust.
"Syncopation, body-movement and pleasure in groove music"
 http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094446

Maria Witek is currently postdoc in the Music In the Brain research group at CFIN/Aarhus University (AU) and the study has been made in a collaboration between researchers from AU and Oxford University.