Researchers say an individual's personality can be identified by the way the person gyrates on the dance floor.

While extroverts went around the most of the dance floor with energetic movements of their limbs, neurotic individuals had sharp, jerky movements. Around 60 volunteers with five strong personality traits were analyzed for the study, who danced to 30 different tracks from rock, techno, Latin, jazz, funk and pop genres.

Different personalities had different dance styles and there was a strong correlation between certain dancing styles and the personalities. The researchers used motion capturing technology to record the dance style.

"Music is known to evoke strong emotions in people and emotions can be expressed through bodily movement," said Dr Geoff Luck of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, who led the research. “People use body motions as reliable indicators of others' personality types, and even the movements of robots have been shown to elicit attributes of 'personality' by observers."

The researchers studied the dance moves of 60 volunteers who had been selected from 900 people who conducted personality tests. The dancers were picked due to having strong scores in one of the five main personality traits being studied.'

"Certain movements may be more representative of particular genres, such as the way listeners tend to nod their head or tap their foot when listening to jazz music," said Dr Luck.

"Future work might examine how other genres of music, such as classical or world music, influence listeners' spontaneous movements. Such music may not elicit the same kind of rhythmical dancing movements, but would help us better understand the effects of music on body movement."