What your moves say about you

According to a recent study, your movements can give a unique insight into your inherent personality traits.

The ground-breaking study could open up new pathways for health professionals to diagnose and treat mental health conditions in the future.

The team of experts, including from the University of Exeter, has shown that people who display similar behavioural characteristics tend to move their bodies in the same way.

The new study suggests that each person has an individual motor signature (IMS), a blueprint of the subtle differences in the way they move compared to someone else, such as speed or weight of movement for example.

Using a plain mirror game, in which two 'players' are asked to imitate each other's movements, the team showed that people who have similar movements will tend to display more organised collective behaviour.

The team, which also includes experts from the University of Bristol, Montpellier University and the University of Naples Federico II, believes that these findings indicate that people with comparable movement blueprints will therefore find it easier to coordinate with each other during interpersonal interactions.

The team also believes that a person's IMS and how they interact with others could give an insight into their mental health condition, and so pave the way for personalised prediction, diagnosis or treatment in the future.

Professor Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova said that this study shows that people who move in a certain way, will also react in similar ways when they are performing joint tasks. Essentially, our movements give an insight into our inherent personality traits.

The study is published in leading scientific.