Emotions Expressed in Body Movements, Postures, Gait, and Dance

This chapter explores the evolution of nonverbal communication, focusing on how body movements and postures express emotions through a probabilistic relationship between them and emotions. It argues that nonverbal communication, influenced by natural selection, shaped a contingent repertoire of behaviors associated with emotions. The main three arguments are: (1) the nonverbal modalities used to express emotions depend on the type of affect felt at the moment and the efficiency of that modality; (2) the modalities of nonverbal displays of emotions are interrelated such that redundancy is built into the communication system, and (3) evolution has endowed humans with a probabilistic repertoire of behaviors associated with emotions. The chapter examines the relationship between inner states and typology of nonverbal cues, including body movements, gait, posture, and dancing, emphasizing their parakinesic properties such as intensity, speed, and duration. It highlights that while certain patterns of body movements are generally associated with specific emotions, their expression and meaning are complex and vary depending on context, culture, and individual differences, leading to different degrees of recognition accuracy. Future research could probe nonverbals with more ecologically valid methods, sidetracking exaggerated posed movements, deliberate portrayals, and forced-choice answers in the design. This would enhance our understanding of how emotions are conveyed through these various forms of body expressions and postures, expanding our understanding of the richness and depth of nonverbal communication in human emotional displays in modalities other than the facial expressions.