Tap, move, or dance? How groove ratings differ across movement descriptors

Groove, defined as the pleasurable urge to move to music, is affected by properties of the music as well as factors that differ among individuals, such as music training. Ratings of the desire to produce movement (e.g., tapping and dancing) have been used to quantify the amount of groove being experienced, but we do not know whether the specific type of movement that is rated affects scores. Further, few studies have considered the effect of dance training on groove perception. Therefore, the current paper investigates whether rating different types of movements (i.e., tapping vs dancing) affects groove ratings, and how dance experience may alter these ratings. The first study used a within-subject design, with participants rating forty unfamiliar songs on their elicited desire to tap, desire to move, and desire to dance. To assess whether rating all three movement descriptors together created rating differences that would not be observed if participants were not comparing the movement descriptors against each other, a between-subjects study was conducted with the same procedure except that the three groups of participants each rated only one movement descriptor. In both studies, ratings of groove differed based on the type of movement rated. Overall, desire to dance ratings were lower than move or tap ratings across both studies. Desire to tap ratings were significantly higher than move ratings, but only in the first study; in the second study, move and tap ratings did not significantly differ. In the first study, dance training influenced desire to move and desire to dance ratings, while music training influenced desire to tap ratings, however these findings were not replicated in Study 2. Overall, the findings suggest that groove ratings differ based on the type of movement rated, that within- versus between-subject designs affect these ratings, and that dance and music training differentially affect different groove responses.