The effects of hand gestures on psychosocial perception: A preliminary study

Abstract

To date a few studies have experimentally investigated the effects of hand gestures (and frequency) on psychosocial perception. A preliminary study with two experiments were conducted, in which confederates manipulated "Type" (rhythmic gestures, cohesive gestures and self-adaptors for experiment 1; rhythmic gestures, focusing gestures and dynamic gestures for experiment 2) and "Frequency" (low and high) during a face-to-face conversation with the participants. ANOVAs reveal that rhythmic gestures influence positively competence perception but negatively conversational fairness, self-adaptors increase warmth evaluation and high frequency influences positively warmth and dominance perceptions. Hand gestures appear to play a causal role in psychosocial evaluation. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.