Happy faces, faster stops: The cognitive benefits of dance in emotional contexts

Dance integrates physical movement with cognitive and emotional processes, offering unique benefits beyond mere exercise. While previous studies have explored the impact of dance on response inhibition, the mechanisms by which irrelevant emotional stimuli modulate inhibition in dancers remains unclear. This study investigated the role of dance in modulating response inhibition in emotional and non-emotional contexts. We compared dancers and non-dancers on two response inhibition tasks: the non-emotional stop-signal task (NESST) and the emotional stop-signal task (ESST), which examined inhibition in the presence of irrelevant emotional information. Participants also completed self-report measures of mood, affect, and behavioural inhibition and activation systems. There was no group differences emerged for inhibition on the NESST. However, in the ESST, significant main effects of group and emotion were observed along with the significant interaction effect. Dancers showed a better response inhibition than non-dancers when faced with stop signals with irrelevant happy facial expression. Within the dancer group, happy faces uniquely enhanced response inhibition compared to angry and neutral faces, indicating a distinct modulation of cognitive processing by positive emotional stimuli in dancers. Dancers also reported lower depression and stress, higher positive affect, and more balanced behavioural activation profiles. The results are interpreted through functional perspectives on how dance, by fostering eudaimonic well-being and pleasurable engagement, may enhance the efficient allocation of attention to emotional stimuli. Overall, the findings suggest that dance training is associated with better response inhibition in perceptually emotionally salient contexts, particularly when processing positive emotional faces, highlighting its potential for cognitive-emotional enhancement.