Individual Differences as Predictors of Seven Dance Style Choices

The present study investigated recreational dancers of seven dance styles (Ballet, Contemporary, Jazz/Tap, Hip-Hop, Belly, Ballroom, Latin), their personal demographics, dance motivation and the Big Five personality traits. Three hundred and four participants indicated their dance style and answered motivation questions for each one. Further, they completed a measure of the Big Five personality traits. Factor analysis demonstrated three underlying motivation factors (Mood Enhancement, Fitness, and Self-Confidence) for each dance style. Mood Enhancement was the strongest predictor to dance in six out of seven dance styles. Limitations are acknowledged.


Personality and Dance
The body of personality work suggests that the Big Five personality traits are associated with a variety of creativity-related phenomena, including music preference (Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2010), perception and experience of emotion in music (Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2010) and art preference (e.g. Furnham & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2004). Relationships between these five personality factors and recreational choice have also been documented (Kirkaldy & Furnham, 1991).
Dance is a recreational and professional form of sport, which is closely related to music and creativity (Maraz et al., 2015). Dancers have been characterized as being more creative, introverted, scoring high on neuroticism and openness to experience (Alter, 1984;Bakker, 1991;Haller, 2010;Marchant-Haycox & Wilson, 1992;Rubinstein & Strul, 2006) compared to non-artists and non-dancers. Nevertheless, such studies tend to investigate a limited amount of dance styles and have focused mostly on female professionals. Fink and Woschnjak (2011)  were attributed to the fact that Ballet and Jazz require more performance from pre-established choreographies and less creative input. These findings have been supported in the music domain. For example, individuals high in Openness, a trait that assesses intellectual curiosity, preferences for novel experiences and creativity, preferred complex compared to happy or sad music (Chamorro-Premuzic, Fagan, & Furnham, 2009). The personality trait Conscientiousness involves self-discipline, organisation and diligence and high scores on this trait overlap with descriptions of perfectionism (Nordin-Bates et al., 2012;Stoeber, Otto, & Dalbert, 2009). Research has found, albeit in classical domains such as orchestral music and ballet, that it is common for performers to be classified as perfectionists in order to achieve high standards of excellence (Dews & Williams, 1989;Van Staden et al., 2009 (Bakker, 1991;Buckroyd, 2000;Neumärker, Bettle, Neumärker, & Bettle, 2000;Laws, 2005;Marchant-Haycox & Wilson, 1992). Factors such as feelings of exposure and vulnerability, having one's identity tightly bound to the performance activity and lack of feedback may cause these feelings (Fortin, 2009;Hays & Brown Jr., 2004). Bakker (1988) further suggested that the atmosphere of professional schools, which routinely criticise body appearance and physical abilities, might explain Ballet dancers' low self-esteem. The role of self-esteem in dance remains unclear, however, these findings are based on work with Ballet dancers (Neumärker et al., 2000) via a small qualitative study (Hanrahan, 1996), single-item self-report (Laws, 2005) or anecdotally (Buckroyd, 2000) and contrast findings stating that physical activity is positively correlated with self-esteem (Opdenacker, Delecluse, & Boen, 2009).

Dance Motivation
Dance is frequently expressed in mating contexts and seems, in part, to function as a human courtship display serving to attract potential partners (Hanna, 2010;Hendrie et al., 2009;Hugill et al., 2011 Few empirical studies have explored the motivations behind why people choose to dance, but a consensus in performance psychology seems to be that the pursuit of enjoyment is often the primary reason for engaging in a performing art (Bond & Stinson, 2007;Houston, 2004;Papageorgi et al., 2010). Most studies exploring this domain, however, have used a descriptive-qualitative method of assessment (Nieminen, 1998;Nieminen, Varstala, & Manninen, 2001).
In an attempt to find underlying motivational factors of experienced dancers, Nieminen (1998) (Bond & Stinson, 2007;Houston, 2004;Papageorgi et al., 2010;Stinson, 1997). Further supporting this finding, Domene and colleagues (2014) found that novice to advanced Latin dancers take part in classes particularly for leisure purposes and social enjoyment. Kreutz (2008) also found that tango dancing was considered a primary leisure activity, involving the opportunity for physical exercise, social interaction and emotional reward. In the current study, we adapted Maraz and colleagues' (2015) DMI to determine if similar factors would arise when investigating seven different dance styles.

The Present Study
The current study asked participants their motivations behind a range of dance styles including Ballet, Contemporary, Jazz/Tap, Hip Hop, Belly, Ballroom and Latin, asked less investigated demographic questions such as sexuality, and self-attractiveness ratings and also provided a personality test.
H1: There is an underlying structure regarding the motivations to dance certain styles.
H2: Individual differences in demographics, personality traits and dance motivations are correlated to dance style choices.
H3: Individual differences in demographics, personality traits and dance motivations predict dance style choices. Cha Cha, Merengue, Reggaeton, Lambada). Measures were taken of whether they danced the style or not, and how much they liked the dance style with a rating of 0 -10.

Dance Motivation Scale
The participants answered the same set of 15 questions for each of the seven dance styles. To measure motivation ratings for each dance, we constructed the Dance Motivation Scale, based on Maraz et al.'s (2015) Dance Motivation Inventory. Participants rated their opinion of what a dancer of the given style would answer from 0 (disagree completely) -10 (agree completely). (Gosling et al., 2003) After answering the Dance Motivation Scale for each of the seven dance styles, the personality test was administered to determine participants' Big Five personality traits: Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experiences.

Demographics
Finally, the participants were asked their sexual orientation, BMI, relationship status and ratings of self-attractiveness (i.e. rating from 0 -10).

Frequencies
The frequency and proportion of dancers per dance style was calculated and is shown in Table 1. Almost half of the sample (46.7%) danced Contemporary, whereas the least danced style was Belly (14.5%).

Factor Analyses
Participants' scores from the Dance Motivation Scale for all the dance styles underwent a factor analysis with a VARIMAX rotation. In this first analysis, 13 out of the 15 items correlated at least .45 with at least one other item, suggesting factorability Competitive and Vigorous motivations did not fit into any identified components due to less than.45 correlations with the other items. This first analysis also showed that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was .84, above the commonly recommended value of .6, and Bartlett's test of Sphericity was significant (χ 2 (105) = 4642.00, p < .001). Given these indicators, a second factor analysis was deemed to be suitable with 13 items. A second factor analysis with VARIMAX rotation reduced the remaining 13 items to three Four items also identified the third component, labelled Self-Confidence: Self-esteem, Attractive, Sassy, and Promiscuous, and these explained 11.04% of the variance. These 4 items were averaged into a new variable per participant for each dance style. The components were given the same names as Maraz et al. (2015) due to their similarity.
The internal reliability of the Motivations were Mood Enhancement .90, Fitness .91 and Self-Confidence .90. Table 3 shows the results of the Pearson product-moment correlations between

Correlational Analysis
Demographic measures, Personality measures and the dance styles.
As shown in Table 3, Ballet correlates positively with Contemporary, Jazz and Ballroom, Contemporary and Jazz correlate positively with Hip Hop. Ballroom

Logistical Regression
The data was then further analysed using binary logistical regression in order to find whether demographic, personality and motivational measures were significant predictors of choosing to dance each dance style.

Discussion
In line with the studies general aim, the current study found individual differences in demographics, Big Five personality traits and motivations relating to and predicting a range of seven dance style choices. Confirming our first hypothesis, an underlying dance motivation structure was found. The Dance Motivation Scale was found to consist of 3 components as opposed to eight as stated by Maraz et al. (2015). Nevertheless, given the similarity of Maraz and colleagues' motivation items and components, the same names were given: Mood Enhancement, Fitness and Self-Confidence.
Confirming the second and third hypotheses, four out of five personality traits correlated with dance styles and three personality traits predicted dancing cer-  (2011), who demonstrated that Ballet and Jazz/Tap dancers had higher conscientiousness scores than Contemporary dancers.
A possible explanation for conscientiousness predicting to dance Ballet is that the style is associated with following strict rules and choreography. This attracts high Conscientiousness scorers as they often display self-discipline, strive for achievement, and prefer planned rather than spontaneous behaviour. Contrastingly, Latin dancing encompasses highly improvised steps, synchronising with one's partner as well as taking the lead or being lead. Since partner dancing generally involves one male and one female, gender differences in Conscientiousness scores related to dancing should be explored in future research.
Furthermore, the personality trait Extraversion correlated positively with Latin dance, and high scores increased the likelihood (almost significantly) of dancing Latin and Jazz/Tap. Extraverts feel comfortable around people, are very sociable and like to be constantly stimulated (Costa Jr. & McCrae, 1992). In line with music research however, it could be that the nature of Latin dance music attracts extraverts, as it has been found that extraverts prefer listening to happy music over sad or complex music (Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2009) that might be associated more with Ballet and Contemporary styles. It should also be noted that the opposite trait, Introversion, did not predict dancing any of the styles as opposed to Bakker's (1988Bakker's ( , 1991 research. Perhaps Introversion is more defining of professional Ballet students rather than of the current sample, which included a range of recreational dancers. Despite the trait Openness to Experience correlating positively with Latin, Hypothesis 3 2 was not supported by the current findings, as the trait did not predict to dance any styles. Perhaps this trait is more predictive of professional dancers as Fink and Woschnjak (2011) found that Contemporary dancers scored Overall, certain personalities have been found to predict dancing a number of dance styles. This is in line with the Self-Selection Hypothesis (Carr & Wyon, 2003;Kogan, 2002;Marchant-Haycox & Wilson, 1992;Wills & Cooper, 1988 gesting that the pursuit of enjoyment is often the primary reason for engaging in a performing art (e.g., Bond & Stinson, 2007;Houston, 2004;Papageorgi et al., 2010;Stinson, 1997). These findings are consistent with Maraz et al. (2015) findings that Mood Enhancement was a strong motivational factor for recreational dancers as well as Domene et al.'s (2014) findings that novice and advanced Latin dancers take part for leisure and social enjoyment. The music in dance also facilitates group coordination and cohesion, social exchange, and regulation of movements, and internal and external imitation of music is a form of empathy, which can strengthen social bonds and release endorphins (Fink & Shackelford, 2016;Leman, 2008;McNeill, 1995;Tarr, Launay, & Dunbar, 2016). Thus, synchrony-based activities involving music such as dance may have developed due to the fact that they allow the release of endorphins in human communities, providing an alternative to social bonding mechanisms such as grooming. Quiroga Murcia et al. (2010) similarly found that dancing facilitates sympathy and elicits strong feelings of togetherness and affiliation.
In terms of Fitness motivations, it was found that they correlated with all dance styles except for Hip Hop, Ballroom and Latin but only predicted an increased likelihood in dancing Belly and a decreased likelihood in dancing Latin. It is possible that Belly dancers were motivated by Fitness reasons as the component encompassed items such as "feeling mastery over one's body" and "improving bodily achievement," and Belly dancing is an extremely difficult and technical style. Alternatively, it has been found that physical activity improves mental health and psychological wellbeing (Garber et al., 2011). Since Fitness and Mood Enhancement motivations correlated significantly and positively for each dance style, perhaps Belly dancers are motivated both by Fitness and Mood Enhancement motivations to dance and therefore receive the simultaneous positive effects.
Self-Confidence motivation was positively correlated with Jazz/Tap and Ballroom, and negatively correlated with Hip Hop. High Self-confidence scores decreased the likelihood to dance Ballet and Belly, but increased the likelihood to dance Jazz/Tap. These findings therefore indirectly suggest that Hip Hop, Ballet and Belly dancers suffer from low Self-confidence as opposed to dancers of other styles since the Self-Confidence questionnaire items included questions such as "I feel attractive" and they scored lowly. This supports the finding that performing artists, particularly Ballet dancers, have been shown to suffer from low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence (e.g., Bakker, 1988Bakker, , 1991Buckroyd, 2000;Hanrahan, 1996;Neumärker et al., 2000;Laws, 2005;Marchant-Haycox & Wilson, 1992). Factors such as feelings of exposure and vulnerability and lack of feedback in these dance styles may cause these feelings (e.g., Fortin, 2009;Hays & Brown Jr., 2004).
Lastly, it is worth noting that although the prediction models did explain more than half of the variance in choice in each dance style, correlations between dance styles and individual differences were relatively small. Therefore, it could be that other individual differences are also playing a role. Differences C. Amador Barreiro, A. Furnham Psychology such as spatial ability (e.g., Tarampi, 2013), corporal self-perception and motor preferences (e.g., Cardoso et al., 2010) and beat perception (e.g., Ready et al., 2016) should be investigated in future dance research.

Conclusion
This paper explored individual differences in preference for dance styles, an area of research that has been relatively ignored. Gender, personality and particularly dance motivation were linked to an interest in, and preference for dance styles.