Clubs, Pubs, and Restaurants

Part of the experiment that Skylar (sp?) talked about in class was the importance of movement as essentially body language that can be read by humans across age, race, and culture. The experiment involved taping a bunch of speed dates, and then putting them together so that a viewer can see clips of the footage with or without sound. To isolate movement, the footage of the speed dates was blurred, so that facial expression were not coming into play. That being said, the size of the person, a little information about clothing, and their movements were still present. Even with the blurring, the experiment got pretty consistent results with running the same footage un-blurred. This phenomena got me thinking about how many places dim lights to create "ambiance" in places that dates/ relationships typically happen such as in restaurants, dance clubs, concerts, etc, since that is another way to slightly impair the ability of people to see details.

In these sorts of locations, it is harder due to the lighting to actually see people's faces, so one must necessarily rely more on body movements of any potential targets and on mate copying in order to access the different people there. One does not need lots of light on a dance floor or in a bar to quickly see who the "successful" people are– the people that other people are interacting with/ vying for most. In this way the theory holds up, however, the dim lighting also might make it so that people make choices that they wouldn't have made if they had full visibility, especially since alcohol is usually also linked to these sorts of places. The added complication of drinking adds another barrier to normal judgment, and makes body language that much more important in deriving meaning.