Handshaking, gender, personality, and first impressions.

Abstract

Although people's handshakes are thought to reflect their personality and influence our first impressions of them, these relations have seldom been formalLy investigated. One hundred twelve participants had their hand shaken twice by 4 trained coders (2 men and 2 women) and completed 4 personality measures. The participants' handshakes were stable and consistent across time and coders. There were also gender differences on most of the handshaking characteristics. A firm handshake was related positively to extraversion and emotional expressiveness and negatively to shyness and neuroticisin; it was also positively related to openness to experience, but only for women. Finally, handshake characteristics were •related to the impressions of the participants formed by the coders. These results demonstrate that personality traits, assessed through self-report, can predict specific behaviors assessed by trained observers. The pattern of relations among openness, gender, handshaking, and first impressions suggests that a firm handshake may be an effective form of self-promotion for women.Handshaking is a common greeting behavior and is often one of the first observations that individuals make of each other upon meeting. Thus, the handshake may be a basis for some of the initial impressions that an individual forms about another. Although handshakes are anecdotally believed to communicate information about a person's personality, little systematic research has been done on the relation between handshaking and personality. Indeed, the extent to which handshaking is sufficiently stable across time and consistent across situations to reflect stable individual differences is largely unknown. Handshaking has also historically been more common among men than it has been among women or between men and women. However, we know little about gender differences in handshaking characteristics or about how gender may be involved in relations between personality, initial impressions, and handshaking. The purpose of the present research is to assess the generalizability of some characteristics of handshaking behavior across time and gender; to test some hypotheses about the relations among handshaking dimensions, personality, and gender; and to evaluate the relation between handshaking dimensions and initial impressions formed about strangers.

Handshaking Promotes Cooperative Dealmaking

“…Handshakes not only send a friendly greeting but can also indicate a sociable personality (Chaplin, Phillips, Brown, Clanton, & Stein, 2000). In one study, a firm handshake was positively related to extraversion and emotional expressiveness and negatively related to shyness and neuroticism (Chaplin et al, 2000).…”

“…In one study, a firm handshake was positively related to extraversion and emotional expressiveness and negatively related to shyness and neuroticism (Chaplin et al, 2000). Individuals who follow common prescriptions for shaking hands, such as having a firm grip and looking the other person in the eye, receive higher ratings of employment suitability in job interviews (Stewart, Dustin, Barrick, & Darnold, 2008).…”

Why are moderators of self-other agreement difficult to establish?

“…to be able to make reasonably accurate personality judgments (Albright, Kenny, & Malloy, 1988;Borkenau & Liebler, 1992;Kenny, Horner, Kashy, & Chu, 1992;Levesque & Kenny, 1993;Realo et al, 2003;Shevlin, Walker, Davies, Banyard, & Lewis, 2003;Zebrowitz & Collins, 1997). What is more, ordinary laypeople can deduce personality traits with considerable accuracy based on the strength of a handshake (Bernieri & Petty, 2011;Chaplin, Phillips, Brown, Clanton, & Stein, 2000), how people smell (Sorokowska, Sorokowski, & Szmajke, 2012), how they say 'hello' (McAleer, Todorov, & Belin, 2014), and what their offices and bedrooms look like (Gosling, 2008;Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002).…”

One Dimensional Turing-Like Handshake Test for Motor Intelligence

“…In addition, in this version of the test, we didn't consider the duration of the handshake, the initiation and release times, its multi-dimensional nature and the hand trajectories before and after the physical contact. There are also many types of handshakes depending on gender and culture of the person [13][14] and therefore, one cannot expect to generate a single optimal human-like handshake model. Nevertheless, we believe that the simplicity of the proposed test is an advantage, at least at this preliminary stage of the study.…”