A study recently published in the journal Journal of Marketing Research suggests something many Italians already knew—certain hand gestures really do make people seem more competent and persuasive.
“One of the key takeaways for marketers is that you can use the same content, but if you pay more attention to how that content is delivered, it could have a big impact on persuasiveness,” Mi Zhou, study co-author and University of British Columbia digital market research scientist, said in a statement.
Zhou and her colleagues analyzed 2,184 TED Talks using AI and automated video analysis. They compared hundreds of thousands of video clips of hand features to audience engagement metrics, and asked study participants to rate the speakers and products in videos of sales pitches with different hand movements.
This approach “demonstrates that hand movement can boost impact,” the researchers wrote in the study, but also revealed that not all gestures work. The team then classified hand movements into categories, including illustrators and highlighters.
Illustrators are gestures that depict what one is talking about, such as the size of something. These movements had the strongest impact, enhancing audience understanding and making speakers appear more knowledgeable.
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Highlighters are gestures such as physically identifying an object mentioned verbally. Along with random gestures, highlighters had little to no effect.
“Illustrators can help make the content easier to understand because we’re delivering the same information in two modes: visual and verbal,” Zhou explained. “If a person uses their hands to visually illustrate what they’re talking about, the audience perceives that this person has more knowledge and can make things easier to understand.”
According to the team, this is the first study to investigate hand gestures at scale, and it was enabled by advances in artificial intelligence. The results could carry significance for marketers, influencers, as well as anyone trying to be convincing.
“Sometimes we just move our hands without a purpose. It’s a habit,” Zhou concluded. “But if you pay more attention and understand the impact, it can make a big difference.”
