Your emotions, kinected

There's an old article on Gizmodo on how making certain physical motions can drive your emotions, and how the Kinect and Wii can "hack" that effect.

Numerous studies have shown that movements or postures generate cues the mind can use to figure out how it feels, a phenomenon dubbed the physical-feedback effect. Wii games might also create emotions between people through "emotional contagion," where the brain can make us feel what we see, hear, read or think others experience.

I think this goes without saying -- haven't these people ever danced before? Climbed a tree? Been on a swing? Done a really great exercise class at the Y? And I'm not even talking runner's-high endorphins, I'm just thinking about that moment when you let something loose and boom, you feel fine about everything.

It's like that funny trick with Yoga -- you connect the name of the pose with the action you're doing (get into being a snake while doing Cobra, really push down like a petulant child in Child's Pose, make like a Warrior, etc.), you definitely get that mind-body connection.

However, I think one thing that the Kinect brings to the sheer joy of moving, something that hasn't been explored, is how pairing the Skinner box-like rewards systems of flashy lights and "gamer point" rewards with the fact that moving is fun.

Below are Wii players rating their emotions as they are having them. Maybe we should be doing this during daily activities -- and novel, exercise-based ones, as well?