What constitutes a beautiful action? Research into dance aesthetics has largely focussed on subjective features like familiarity with the observed movement, but has rarely studied objective features like speed or acceleration. We manipulated the kinematic complexity of observed actions by creating dance sequences that varied in movement timing, but not in movement trajectory. Dance-naïve participants rated the dance videos on speed, effort, reproducibility, and enjoyment. Using linear mixed-effects modeling, we show that faster, more predictable movement sequences with varied velocity profiles are judged to be more effortful, less reproducible, and more aesthetically pleasing than slower sequences with more uniform velocity profiles. Accordingly, dance aesthetics depend not only on which movements are being performed but on how movements are executed and linked into sequences. The aesthetics of movement timing may apply across culturally-specific dance styles and predict both preference for and perceived difficulty of dance, consistent with information theory and effort heuristic accounts of aesthetic appreciation.

什么构成美丽的动作？对舞蹈美学的研究主要集中于主观特征，例如对观察到的动作的熟悉程度，但很少研究客观特征，例如速度或加速度。我们通过创建在运动时间上变化但在运动轨迹上不变化的舞蹈序列来操纵观察到的动作的运动学复杂性。天真的舞者对舞蹈视频的速度，努力，可再现性和娱乐性进行了评分。使用线性混合效果建模，我们显示，与速度分布更均匀的速度较慢的序列相比，速度变化不大的更快，更可预测的运动序列被认为更省力，再现性更差且在美学上更令人愉悦。因此，舞蹈美学不仅取决于哪个正在执行动作，但说明如何执行动作并将其链接到序列中。运动时机的美学性可以适用于特定文化的舞蹈风格，并可以预测舞蹈的喜好和感觉到的困难，这与信息论和审美欣赏的努力启发式说明相一致。