The older a man gets, the more he impresses himself with his own dancing, according to a new British study conducted by the University of Hertfordshire's "Doctor of Dance."

(Credit: Babzy)

The dancing doc, Peter Lovatt from the University's School of Psychology, asked BBC Radio 4 program listeners to imagine they were at a party dancing with other people. Via a website survey, Lovatt then asked them to rate how good a dancer they thought they were compared with the average person of their own age and gender.

Nearly 14,000 people filled out this Dance Style Questionnaire. The results? Men 16 and under don't take much pride in their dance moves, but as men grow older, their confidence steadily rises. In fact, men over the age of 65 think they are veritable Saturday Night Fever John Travolta's, with their confidence even surpassing that of 55 to 60-year-old's.

Interestingly, women are just the opposite. They display immense confidence in their dancing up to age 16. There's a drop in boogie boldness from 16 to age 20, then a small rise, before a steady drop in groove pride hits from ages 55 to 65.

Lovatt blames it on our genetic make-up.

“Up to the age of 15 or 16, girls quite

often validate their moves through dance classes which give them more

confidence than boys when it comes to dancing,” he explained. “Then

after 16, they improvise and show their hormonal and genetic make-up

when they dance. Men seem to be more comfortable in their genetic

make-up and in tune with their natural biorhythms and therefore feel

more confident when they dance.”

The next question he wants to answer is, “Why do you dance?” or possibly more pointedly, “Why don’t you dance?”

“We

need to know if people’s reasons for dancing change as they get older,”

he said. “We know despite our research findings that lots of men don’t

dance and we wonder why this is. It may be that they perceive it as a

non-macho activity and if this is the case, we need to find ways to

introduce it as a fun vital health measure.”

To take part in “Why do you dance," please go to this site.