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This week on The Science of Happiness, we explore how dancing connects us, enhances well-being, and fosters community. Lori Arnett, a NASA engineer, shares how a month-long dance practice brought her closer to her daughters and colleagues, offering moments of calm and joy. She reflected on how dancing parallels her work at NASA, where teamwork enables extraordinary achievements.
Dr. Bronwyn Tarr, an expert on the science of dance, also reveals how synchronized movement not only enhances mood and reduces stress but also raises our pain threshold by triggering the release of endorphins.
Guests: Lori Arnett, Associate Director for Digital Transformation for the Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities (AETC) within the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) at NASA
Learn More About Lori Arnett: https://tinyurl.com/2bbhr7ht
Bronwyn Tarr, Research at The Social Body Lab within the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion at the University of Oxford
Learn More About Bronwyn Tarr: https://tinyurl.com/mxvm5mr8
Related Science of Happiness Episodes:
The Science of Happiness and Music: https://tinyurl.com/4f9axvca
A three-episode series exploring how music helps to boost our mood, make us feel connected to others, and bridge divides.
How Music Evokes Awe: https://tinyurl.com/3uuef5ke
Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or follow on Instagram @HappinessPod.
LORI ARNETT: I was dancing with my daughter, my youngest daughter, who's a raging goofball. So we're high energy dancing. Having fun. And at one point, I grabbed her hands. So we started dancing with our hands, and we were not doing the same thing, but we were touching.
And at that moment, it really sunk into me, really hit home, the connection. And of course, this is my daughter, I'm highly connected with her to begin with. But in that moment, in that practice, doing that, I'm like, “Wow. This is about being with people and feeling that connection with people." And dancing is like that. Even if it's just to celebrate somebody's wedding, or because you just want to go out and have fun with your friends, you're bringing people together. And I think it's centered around that.
And it actually made me think of NASA and what we do, and the connections you make with the people you work with, because it's all about doing something together, bringing people together to achieve something.
DACHER KELTNER: Welcome to Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Dancing is something that unites us across cultures and time, and in many ways embodies what it means to be human. And in recent years, scientists have documented an array of mental and physical health benefits of dancing, from reducing stress to improving brain function. So this week we're taking a closer look at this nexus of dance and health.
Our guest is Lori Arnett. She is an engineer for NASA. And perhaps unsurprisingly for an engineer, she took a meticulous, data-driven approach to her practice of dancing, an approach that yielded surprising results.
We’ll delve into Lori’s insights on the connecting power of dance, and the compelling ways she’s applied this knowledge to her life. We’ll also hear from a dancer turned scientist whose carried out multiple studies on this precise topic.
BRONWYN TARR: The way that humans ritualize music and dance in so many different arenas of human experience -- from religion, to celebrations, you know, marriage, other kinds of ceremonies throughout different cultures -- show that there's something special about it that has survived, that keeps coming back.
DACHER KELNTER: More after this break.
AD BREAK
DACHER KELNTER: Welcome to the Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Today we’re exploring how dancing, a simple yet powerful practice, can bring profound benefits to our well-being. Throughout history people have danced to connect, express themselves, and celebrate life's milestones. It’s a way we share our experiences, our emotions, and our creativity.
Our guest today is Lori Arnett, a NASA engineer spent the past month dancing -- as experiment for our show. She tried it alone, with friends, even sitting on a chair. She joins us today to share her experiences.Thanks so much for being here, Lori.
LORI ARNETT: Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
DACHER KELNTER: I often like to explore, with our guests, where they develop this interest, and why they chose the practice. Are you a dancer?
LORI ARNETT: I like to dance. I would not say that I'm a dancer. I'm one that will fake it till I make it at a wedding and everyone thinks I can dance. And I've been told I have a mean polka, but typically I don't have a lot of opportunities to dance.
DACHER KELNTER: I'm curious, you know, for the show, what was your dance practice? Where did you do it? And were you listening to music? Did you share this with other people, by yourself, in the shower, waiting for a bus? What'd you do?
LORI ARNETT : Alright, well, as an engineer, of course, I read the research articles that NOAM sent me. I was trying to just understand the theory behind the dance. So for me, I picked up on low energy and high energy, synchronous and asynchronous were kind of some of the variables. And then for me, I was thinking with people or by yourself. So in typical fashion, I wanted to explore each of those variables. But I will admit, it's very hard in my life to get, especially at work, when I mentioned I was doing this practice, people ran from me. So it's not a normal thing for a NASA engineer to ask of their peers. Let's just say there. I got a lot of weird looks.
DACHER KELTNER: I love your scientific engineering approach. You know, you've got the variables and the kinds and the context considered and we're really grateful. Cause we asked you to do this for a week, but you did it for a month with every imaginable person you're chasing people down at NASA.
LORI ARNETT : So I started just trying to get anyone to dance with me at first. That's where I started. I'm not gonna name names, but I did at least get one co-worker to dance with me. So it was more high energy chair dance.
DACHER KELTNER: Can you tell us what high energy chair dancing is? I have no idea
LORI ARNETT : Okay. So real high energy music, and you're both sitting and dancing in your chair. More of an upper body motion and moving around and, and actually that became synchronous, which was interesting. I have three daughters, and I got some of them to dance with me some of the time. And then obviously dancing by myself, dancing in the shower, just dancing in my room, just dancing wherever.And for whatever reason, I honed in on Dancing With Myself by Billy Idol. Like that just became the one that I always chose to dance to. And I tried different music and that seemed to resonate with me. And I would always picture the movie Flushed Away that my kids would watch and the character dancing by himself and just dancing like crazy.
DACHER KELTNER: And then the practice itself. What did it bring to you?
LORI ARNETT : It was this good feeling from exerting myself. And I will say that when I was dancing with my daughter, my youngest daughter, who's a raging goofball, we were high energy dancing. She’s ten. And at one point I grabbed her hands. And at that moment, it really sunk in to me, really hit home, the connection. In that moment, in that practice, doing that, I'm like, "Wow. This is about being with people and feeling that connection with people." That was what I was getting from that practice. And I think the synchrony and touching really makes that very true. And it hit me so hard I actually teared up when I was dancing with her. The power of that connection.
DACHER KELTNER: You know, Bronwyn Tarr over in England has made that point from an evolutionary perspective. You really nicely illustrate this, which is that dance and all of these social activities bring in the power of social connection, right? You're making eye contact, vocalizing together, touching, synchronizing. Really powerful.
BRONWYN TARR: And I can argue, it also, it made me think about my workout class and that became for me, that, that is my dance practice. I might not be formally dancing, but that's my form. And I've been going to this gym for nine years. And I've been to well over 1,300 classes. We created a community at this gym where we go out. We have a book club, we do community events together. We are a really tight knit group and it's really awesome. Totally sweating our butts off, pushing each other, and you're working really hard, and you're doing it together. It's so meaningful. It's so powerful.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah. It's so wonderful that you did the alone and the group comparison and then extended it to your thinking about exercise. I'm curious about just the feeling of your body. You've mentioned. certain kinds of exercise you do, and dance is a physical practice. We know scientifically one of the benefits of it is it kind of makes you tolerate pain better, just probably through the opioid system. What did you notice in terms of physical sensations?
LORI ARNETT : I would say more content, just a calmer feeling, like you're more relaxed. It would be physically more relaxed. So it's not like I felt healthier per se, but I think mentally, emotionally, it really drew my attention to that element and that piece of that physical exertion, of the physical part. It's not all about just being strong or, you know, trying to have a healthy heart or whatever your purpose for working out. It's in the mental emotional connection that here's a lot of value. But I think just doing this practice really brought my attention to that. So now I'm more mindful of that when I go to my workout class. I look around and I'm just like, "Hey man, these are my people." So I noticed the difference. Absolutely. When I go to the gym at the hotel and work out by myself, it's not the same to me as when I'm working out with these people in this gym doing this hard work together.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, that's cool. Lori, you do really hard work. It's technically demanding. It's quantitatively hard. It's an intense work environment at NASA. And one of the things that we always wonder about with these happiness practices, if you will, is how does it affect your concentration? You talked a lot about the social benefits of dance. Research shows with high schoolers, it makes them more mindful, a little bit better able to concentrate. What did you notice about your mind in its operations?
LORI ARNETT : Well, just that sense of calmness, right? That level feeling allowed me to tackle. with a different mindset to start. Not anxious about what I have to get done today. I'm not stressing that I have more on my plate than I can manage. It's almost like a wet blanket just holding you. A warm wet blanket, a good wet blanket, not a bad one. But it gives you that mental clarity and focus to move forward because you can focus on what's important and what you're really trying to achieve, not necessarily all the anxiety or stress that you might be feeling.
DACHER KELTNER: There's work now from Australia showing, really converging with what you're saying that, that dance is even better at treating depression than other physical things like walking and jogging and yoga and so forth. How did this dance practice for a month shift your subjective mood and feeling and well being?
LORI ARNETT : I think dance typically is in an environment with others. And when you're dancing with others, I think that's the connection. And that's something that anybody can do. Everyone can dance. You can chair dance. My dance is high intensity interval training. That's just how I look at it. But the connection is just being aware, and it actually made me think of NASA and what we do, and the connections you make with the people you work with, because it's all about doing something hard together, bringing people together to achieve something. What we do is really hard, really challenging. And when you bring people together to do this as a team, we achieve amazing things. And dancing is like that. I mean, even if it's just to celebrate somebody's wedding, or because you just want to go out and have fun with your friends, you're bringing people together. And I think that it’'s centered around that. That's what it was for me. Like I said, I don't think dancing alone was bad.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah.
LORI ARNETT: But it wasn't as meaningful to me.
DACHER KELTNER: I think you've gotten to something the happiness literature doesn't appreciate enough, which is that when we do these things together, there's something qualitatively different, right? If that is the amplifying power of doing it together, how would you describe what doing this dance together with your daughter or a work colleague, what shifted?
LORI ARNETT: It's the connectivity and, and that we are all human and you need, we were made to be with others, right? I believe that. We're not made to be alone. And especially in this world today, coming off of the pandemic, Isolation is a real issue. And I think for me that just really hit at home and I'm not isolated in any means. I'm around other people all the time, but it really made me hit home about when you're isolated, how that could really affect your mood and spiral you down and make you not happy, right? Depressed and anxious. So being with others is so important. So important. And I think I appreciate that better now. And for me, recognizing that now and making that connection every time I go to that gym, it's not just because I'm trying to maintain my health. It's because of the people -- I always recognized it was a great community and I loved the people there, but to put it in the perspective of this practice, that's what I'm taking away. I found what it was for me in my life, but it's making me look at it with a different lens.
DACHER KELTNER: Lori Arnett, thank you so much for taking I think, one of the the great pathways to happiness that's understudied and deeply human, which is to dance and then with the brilliance of an engineer and a scientist, you've unpacked all the variables that we should be thinking about and taught us a lot about the deeper meaning to finding a groove together. So thanks so much for being on our show.
LORI ARNETT: Thank you very much for having me. It's been fun.
DACHER KELTNER: Up next, we’ll hear from an Oxford scientist whose work on dance mirrors to a remarkable degree Lori’s own experience.
BRONWYN TARR: I love doing research on dance. I love making people dance in the name of science. I created a series of experiments to try and test a prevailing theory about why we might make music and dance.
DACHER KELTNER: Welcome back to The Science of Happiness, I'm Dacher Keltner. Today, we’re talking about dance, and to learn more about this topic, we spoke to psychologist and dance expert, Bronwyn Tarr at the University of Oxford.
BRONWYN TARR: I tried to answer a big question, which was, why do we dance? Why did our ancestors start making music, start moving their bodies in time to that music, what benefits, if any, Could it have afforded our ancestors? And could it still be offering us today in the modern world?
DACHER KELTNER: What’s key isn't just that our ancestors have always engaged in dance, but that humans appear to have a need for it as a species.
BRONWYN TARR: We see birds that sing, whales that sing, etc. They synchronize their movements to music. Lots of examples of birds that dance in order to attract mates. But the way that humans ritualize music and dance in so many different arenas of human experience, from religion, to celebrations, you know, marriage, other kinds of ceremonies throughout different cultures, and as far back as we have recorded history, show that there's something special about it. So I created a series of experiments to try and test a prevailing theory about why we might make music and dance.
DACHER KELTNER: Bronwyn gathered groups of people for experiments where they engaged in different types of dance and movement together.
BRONWYN TARR: Well, one thing that we did was create a silent disco experiment where we could control what people were hearing when they were dancing with other strangers, in fact.
DACHER KELTNER: And then they measured the impact of dance on pain tolerance.
BRONWYN TARR: We, in my experiment, used a pain pressure test where we attached a ball. blood pressure cuff to the upper arm, inflated it, and the pressure at which people expressed discomfort was the measure of their pain threshold. We found that when people danced in synchrony, their pain threshold was higher as compared to before they had danced. So this is broadly termed the synchrony effect. And those that just danced but not in synchrony also experienced a boost in their pain threshold, but not to the same extent. And we confirmed that that pain threshold was, in fact, due to endorphins by giving them endorphin blockers that prevented endorphins from then landing in those receptors. And those individuals did not experience the elevated pain threshold.
DACHER KELTNER: The endorphins from dance really kicked in the most when people were moving in sync, dancing together with the same rhythm and pattern.
BRONWYN TARR: When you're doing the same thing at the same time, we know from studies and other research on rowing and other physical activity, people experience elevated pain thresholds. So that's the part of our brain that is responding when we are moving our body and exercising, putting it under stress. Our pain and pleasure circuitry gets activated and we have more happy chemicals like endorphins pumping through our system. That's what gives you the feel good effect when you go for a run or the endorphin high that you get when you exercise. But when you dance together, it turns out that this endorphin effect is elevated specifically when you are synchronizing your movements at the same time as others.
DACHER KELTNER: This may be why dance is such a big part of human social life.
BRONWYN TARR: When people do report feeling closer to others when they dance together, when they enjoy dancing together, it motivates them to come back and we think this is part of the fabric of what then reinforces a kind of sense of collectivity, a sense of being on the same team as others, a sense of belonging. All of which are important in an evolutionary sense to the long term survival of any group. Again, we are a social species, so our ancestors couldn't have done anything without each other. Couldn't have raised our young, defended territory, found food, gone for a hunt.
DACHER KELTNER: Even in today’s more isolated world, our needs aren't really much different. Yes, today we can essentially appear to operate individually. We can go to the shop, buy food for ourselves. But we know in fact that loneliness and a feeling of social disconnection has very strong mental health and other physical health consequences, in fact comparable to that of smoking. So any activity which brings people together and gets them moving in synchrony and aligning their sense of collectivity is going to be positive in our ancestral landscape but also still today. And dancing is one way of doing that. It essentially offers people opportunities to connect with others, and also to do it at scale. Not just through synchrony, but through the fact that it is this extremely powerful, physical, moving, and also emotively moving experience. What's particularly exciting is that you don't have to bust out intense dance moves to enjoy the benefits of moving in sync.
BRONWYN TARR: What we found was that even when people were seated and not actually doing huge full body Zumba class level feats of dance, they were still experiencing a positive social and endorphin effect just by virtue of the fact that they were doing small movements in synchrony. How small a movement can still trigger this effect is yet to be confirmed by the science. But small hand movements, small physical dancing just with hands or upper body was enough for people to demonstrate increased liking, trust, etc. of each other and an increase in pain threshold. And that's really great news for people who are mobile or who are elderly and might not be able to attend a weekly dance class or whatever it might be. Some, many people count themselves out. They say, I'm not a dancer. I'm not musical. I can't, I can't sing to save my life. I have two left feet. But I always say, if you find yourself driving in your car, listening to a song that comes on and you just start nodding your head in time to that beat or tapping your finger on the steering wheel, that right there is an inherited musicality. That's all it actually takes to improve your feelings of happiness, your sense of connection with others.
DACHER KELTNER: On the next episode of The Science of Happiness, we’ll explore how embracing awe can help parents and caregivers find more balance and joy in their journey.
NOAM OSBAND: One night we watched the movie Winged Migration, which is a 20 year old documentary about birds migrating. And then the next day we watched movies about volcanoes. And both nights, there were moments where I heard each child sort of under their breath saying things like, "Wow, or amazing."
DACHER KELTNER: Thanks for joining us on The Science of Happiness. This episode was produced by Noam Osband. Our associate producers are Dasha Zerboni and Emily Brower.
Our sound designer is Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. Shuka Kalantari is our executive producer. I'm your host, Dacher Keltner. I hope you get a little dance or fun movement in your day!
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