A new study has revealed exactly what your walk says about you – whether it’s a slow swagger or a peppy stride.
Scientists from the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Japan carried out several experiments as part of their study.
Their results revealed that a fast gait with swinging arms indicates that someone might be angry.
A sad walk, meanwhile, is characterised by slouched shoulders, minimal arm swing, and a slow gait.
And if someone is happy, you’ll be able to tell from the obvious bounce in their walk.
The findings suggest that you can actually judge people’s emotions before they’ve even opened their mouths.
‘An individual’s gait can reveal their emotional state from a distance, enabling social decision–making – such as whether to approach or avoid them – before their facial expressions become visible’, the researchers said.
‘While facial expressions can be consciously controlled, gait represents a spontaneous and habitual motor behaviour that may provide reliable cues for one’s internal emotional state.’
The researchers found angry and happy people swung their arms and legs more than sad or scared people
Happy characters, such as Tony in Saturday Night Fever, walk with an obvious ‘bounce’ to their step and a certain swagger
As part of their study, the team recorded actors walking a set distance while expressing five distinct emotions – angry, happy, fear, neutral and sad.
Using a motion capture system, they were able to create videos showing how major points of the body moved during the walks.
A separate set of participants were then shown the videos and were asked to guess what emotion was being portrayed.
Analysis revealed they could do this to a high level of accuracy – for example by looking at the swing of the arms and legs and the walking speed.
One of the main factors that helped people determine emotion was how large the arm movements were, they explained.
‘Angry gait involves exaggerated arm swings, whereas sad and fearful gaits involve reduced arm movement,’ the researchers wrote in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
They added that sad walks showed a ‘smaller vertical bounce’ than angry walks.
The easiest emotion to detect from walking style was sad, the team found, while the most difficult was angry.
The findings help explain why angry characters in films – such as the Italian grandmother in Walt Disney’s Coco movie – walk with a fast gait and swing their arms
Using a motion capture system, the researchers were able to create videos showing how major points of the body moved during the walks. Participants were then asked which emotion they thought correlated to the movements
A previous study has found that the style of arm swing differs between sadness and fear, as sad walking ‘involves the entire arm’ while fearful walking involves ‘mainly the forearms’.
It also found that the speed of gait influences emotion perception, with faster walking speeds linked to perceptions of happiness and anger and slower speeds associated with sadness and being scared.
The findings help explain why angry characters in films – such as the Italian grandmother in Disney’s Coco – walk with a fast gait and swing their arms.
Meanwhile George–Michael’s ‘sad’ walk in Arrested Development is characterised by slouched shoulders, minimal arm swing and a slow gait.
And happy characters, such as Tony in Saturday Night Fever, walk with an obvious ‘bounce’ to their step and a certain swagger.
‘We observed clear differences in specific movement patterns, especially the arm–leg swing patterns, across perceived emotions, suggesting that these patterns serve as perpetual clues,’ the researchers concluded.
A separate study has previously found that the way someone walks can portray different levels of aggression, agreeableness and extroversion.
A team from the University of Portsmouth found that the exaggerated movement of both the upper and lower body indicates aggression.
George–Michael’s ‘sad’ walk in Arrested Development is characterised by slouched shoulders, minimal arm swing and a slow gait
The study also found that personality traits that help with social skills – such as agreeableness and extroversion – were particularly evident in people with increased pelvis movement alone, or ‘hip sway’.
Meanwhile having less overall movement in a walk, with little swagger and hip sway, suggests you are creative or conscientious, they discovered.
It is hoped that being able to identify a possible relationship between a person’s walk and their intention to engage in aggression could be used as a crime prevention strategy.
‘If CCTV observers could be trained to recognise the aggressive walk demonstrated in this research, their ability to recognise impending crimes could be improved further,’ lead researcher Liam Satchell said.
