Former President of the United States, Barack Obama
A study from the University of British Columbia concludes that intentional hand gestures can increase persuasiveness and the perception of competence.
Words matter — but your hands can matter even more. According to a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business, gesturing deliberately can make a speaker seem more competent and convincing.
The authors of , published in September in Journal of Marketing Researchanalyzed 2.184 TED Talks using Artificial Intelligence and automated video analysis
Researchers isolated more than 200,000 hand gestures in 10-second segments and compared them with audience engagementlike the number of “likes” on social media.
The team also carried out random experiments in which participants watched videos of sales presentations with identical texts, but with different types of gestures. Spectators then evaluated both the speakers and the products presented.
The conclusion: more hand movement can significantly increase the impact, but Not all gestures produce the same effect.
Winning gestures
The researchers classified the gestures into several categories, including so-called “illustrators”, which visually represent the verbal content — for example, showing the size of a fish while talking about it —, and the “enhancers”, such as pointing to an object mentioned in the speech.
In the study, which controlled variables such as gender, profession, language, video length and other factors, random movements and the total absence of gestures.
The gestures illustrators had the strongest effectmaking speakers more credible and facilitating understandingthe study authors concluded. The gestures enhancers and randoms showed little or no impact.
“Illustrators help make content easier to understand, because the information is transmitted in two modes: visual and verbal”, explains the teacher Mi Zhouprofessor at UBC Sauder and co-author of the study. “When people use illustrators, increases the speaker’s perception of competence”.
According to the researcher, the public interprets illustrative gestures as a sign of domain of the topic. “If someone uses their hands to visually illustrate what they are saying, the audience tends to think that This person knows more and is able to make the matter clearer,” adds Zhou.
AI and the secrets of persuasion
While previous studies have explored speech patterns and facial expressions, this is the first to analyze hand gestures. on a large scale.
Advances in Artificial Intelligence made this possible: the team used 21 key points on the hands to measure movements in videos, classified gestures and associated them with spoken content, using multimodal AI — a type of AI capable of simultaneously analyzing different types of data.
The conclusions have implications for marketers, influencers and anyone who seeks to convince an audience — such as politicians.
“One of the key lessons for marketers is that they can use same content, but if you pay more attention to how you present it, can have a much greater impact in persuasion”, says Zhou, in UBC.
The study may also help companies developing virtual assistantsmake AI-generated characters more realistic by combining verbal communication with natural gestures.
“Often we move our hands without a purpose — it’s a habit,” says Zhou. “But if we are aware of this gesture and understand the impact it can have, this can make a big difference”, he concludes.
