You can tell a lot about how someone is feeling by how they swing their arms

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-03-18 11:01

International

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Looking at how someone swings their arms when walking could help gauge their mood, according to international researchers. They found people had a better than chance ability to judge someone's emotions from a motion capture video. The team says coordinated swinging of arms and legs is connected to emotion, and that by manipulating the frequency of swinging arms, they could change the observer's assessment of the walker's emotions. Larger arm movements were perceived to be linked with anger, and reduced movements with sadness, they say.

News release

From: The Royal Society

Identifying and Manipulating Gait Patterns That Influence Emotion Recognition

This study aimed to identify and manipulate movement patterns in gait that influence emotion recognition by combining emotion judgments with kinematic decomposition. In Experiment 1, point-light videos generated from motion-capture data were used in an emotion recognition task. Principal component analysis was applied to extract coordinated movement patterns, and their relationships with perceived emotions were examined. In Experiment 2, one principal component that systematically varied with emotion was manipulated to create stimuli resembling angry, sad, and fearful gaits. Participants’ emotion judgments shifted significantly in the predicted direction, suggesting that specific movement patterns can independently and causally influence emotion recognition.

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Japan

Funder: M.W. and H.I. were supported by JST (Moonshot R&D) (grant number JPMJMS2291). H.I. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI, grant number JP19H05725 and JP24H00172. K.W. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI, grant number JP22H00090 and JP25H01234.

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