Tonight’s Goodnight Tango… is about a bad habit…an addiction.
We all know where I am going with it. Right? Yes… Obviously tango for many if not all of us is very close to being an addiction. But what is it that makes it so addictive? Many of you might answer the embrace, the music, the endorphins, the socializing, etc.
But I have one more aspect that is actually linked with science. Variety! Yes! Variety of experiences that you get as an outcome of the same action. Some decades ago B.F. Skinner, a psychologist famous for his discoveries in behaviorism, did an experiment with some pigeons. Basically what he discovered is that when we do a specific action, the more variety that we get on the outcome the more addicted we get to it and we do it again and again. It is the same psychological principle behind the jackpot machines in casinos and the scrolling on your Facebook stream.
For us, the action is the cabeceo and the outcome is the tanda that we dance to for ten minutes (bad, good, excellent, magic, funny, playful, sentimental, etc). The more variety you get in embraces, feelings, music, playfulness, etc. the more it makes you want more!
Think about it. If you knew how each tanda would feel before you even danced and if all tandas were giving you back the exact same feeling as an outcome, how many tandas would you dance in your life?
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