11/16/2023 0 Comments Too legit to quit hand gestures![]() ![]() When hands stop, the conversation has stopped, often signalling it’s time for the next person to take their conversational turn. Beats help the audience know where you’re up to in the conversation. Hand gestures that aren’t purposeful, those that flow along with speech, are called beats. The message is further cemented and is, therefore, more likely to be remembered. These gestures back up what is heard in speech, again speeding up interpretation. For example, imagine someone gesturing that something is growing, reducing, tall or short I don’t need to describe how this may look as it’s easy to visualise. Purposeful hand gestures add meaning as they describe words. This means faster processing of the message internally. Natural flowing hand gestures also help the audience interpret the message effectively and efficiently because more areas of the brain are activated at the same time-they hear the message and see the message as it is communicated on two levels. Adding natural flowing hand gestures increase engagement levels, making you more interesting to listen to. At the extreme end of behaviours that disengage, we’d be looking at little or no movement in the body, an expressionless face and a monotone voice. When describing why behaviours are important, I find it helpful to describe behavioural extremes. When co-speech gestures are used, the audience is more engaged because there is something to see as well as to hear. On the other hand, when spontaneous hand gestures follow in rhythm with speech ( co-speech gestures), communication improves.īenefits of Hand Gestures for the Audience Hand Gestures are Engaging When hand gestures inadvertently emulate movements displayed during high emotion, you risk being misunderstood, and your message may end up with meaning added where it wasn’t intended. In disbelief that a bug so giant existed in the UK, and in absolute horror that it may land on me, my feet froze, and my arms flailed manically beside my ducked head-or so the witnesses of my emotional display told me. A creature that I can only describe as a queen bee, the size of my hand, entered my garden and buzzed around for a few seconds that felt like an eternity. ![]() I experienced intense creeped-out fear when confined in the tiny walled garden of my terraced house back home in England. When we experience intense emotion such as fear or anger, our movements and gestures can speed up and increase in size, creating a dramatic show of emotion. The audience (one or more people) can end up watching your hands and not listening to your words, or worse still, think you are crazy. Using hand gestures like that can make you appear scatty and disorganised. If you use too many hand gestures, with fast movements taking up too much space, then yes, that can be distracting. Hand gestures can be distracting when used in the wrong way. Furthermore, communication is more difficult for the speaker because, strangely, cognitive load lightens when using hand gestures-we’ll get to that soon. Not only is this a blocking behaviour, creating a physical and, therefore, a psychological barrier between the speaker and the audience, but it also eliminates the second layer of communication that makes understanding easier for the audience. Instead, they are trained to hold an odd, staged pose where hands are held together, forming a V-shape fingers from one hand hold fingers from the other hand, sometimes concealing a clicker. Yes, absolutely you should! There are several benefits to using hand gestures when you communicate for your audience as well as for yourself.Ībsurdly, media training often teaches presenters to abstain from using hand gestures. Should we be using hand gestures to communicate? ![]()
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