Personality of dancers and non-dancers: An exploration

Pages: 1162-1169
Rudrani Mitra and Debadeepa Banerjee (Department of Psychology, Bethune College, Kolkata)

A person of artistic personality uses their body and mind to create new things. They appreciate beauty, unstructured activities and variety. They enjoy interesting and unusual people, sights, textures and sounds. These individuals prefer to work in unstructured situations and use their creativity and imagination. The current study investigates whether there is any distinction between personality trait or features of young dancers and non-dancers. Twenty young female adults (10 dancers & 10 non-dancers) are involved in this study and they are asked to draw a person on a paper and after completing the first drawing experimenter checked the gender of drawing and the participants again are asked to draw a person of opposite gender in another page. A number of personality traits were found that distinguishes a dancer from a non-dancer. It was found that dancers are extrovert, independent, restless, day-dreamer, imaginative, open to experience, warm hearted. On other side non-dancers are self oriented, ambitious, aggressive, inhibited and assaultive. Evidence from the present study suggests that some of the personality traits differ from dancers to non-dancers.