Judgments of Businesspeople Who Shake Hands in the Era of COVID-19

Abstract

Traditionally, handshaking has conferred benefits for businesspeople—signaling politeness, establishing an intention to cooperate, and promoting deal-making. How might the psychological meaning of handshaking have shifted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which led handshaking to become touted as an imminent threat to public health? Through a highly powered, preregistered study (N = 595), we compared U.S. adults’ perceptions of a businessperson who shakes hands vs. refrains from shaking hands during the era of COVID-19. Participants judged handshakers more negatively than non-handshakers, in terms of both global attitude toward them (d = 2.21) and approval of their job performance (d = 2.66). Mediation analyses suggest that businesspeople were judged negatively for shaking hands principally because doing so made them seem less competent and less moral. Judgments of handshaking were more negative among liberals than conservatives and among women than men. To maximize others’ perceptions of them, it would behoove businesspeople to refrain from shaking hands for the foreseeable future. The months and years ahead may be an unprecedented time to rediscover the psychology of handshaking and its role in the workplace.