Japanese researchers have found that a person's emotional state can be determined by the characteristics of their gait. This is reported by The Guardian.
In an experiment involving 117 volunteers and 10 actors, specialists tested whether people can recognize emotions through body movements. The actors wore suits with reflective markers and walked a short distance while portraying basic emotions: joy, sadness, fear, and anger. The movements were recorded with equipment, after which other participants watched the recordings and attempted to determine the emotional state.
The results of the first phase showed that the subjects recognized emotions with accuracy above chance. Sadness was the easiest to identify, while anger posed the greatest difficulties. In the second experiment, videos were shown with a neutral gait but with altered amplitudes of arm and leg movements. Sharp and energetic movements were more often associated with aggression, while more restrained movements were linked to sadness or fatigue.
The authors concluded that such observations could be used in practice, for example, in analyzing recordings from surveillance cameras to identify potentially dangerous behavior.
