Social ethics: The psychology behind shaking hands

A study shows people living in western countries shake hands as a more optimistic behavior than their peers in East Asian countries. “Hand shaking is a common Western practice in business contexts, and it is also historically a male behavior,” said Yuta Katsumi, a graduate student at the University of Illinois – Urbana – Champaign.

Previous studies have shown that hand-shaking behavior has a positive effect on people’s first impressions and their perceptions of others. The new study, reported in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, showed 88 Western and East Asian people short videos of a series of films showing guest interactions in a business setting. The characters either shake hands at the beginning of the meeting or begin the interaction without shaking hands.

After watching each video, participants were asked how interested they would be in doing business with the video guest and how capable he or she was. The results showed that Western participants had positive evaluations of social interactions involving hand lifting compared to East Asians. Further, Western men and women were also found to differentially assess the conditions. Western women rated all interactions with hand shaking more positively than those without.

Western men, on the other hand, rated male guests as positive when they did not shake hands, but rated female guests as positive regardless of whether hand shaking occurred.

“Our findings show that there is a clear expectation in Western men to shake hands at the first encounter with other men. But they do not appear to be affected by a lack of handshakes when interacting with women, ”said Florin Dolcos, a professor at the University of Illinois.

“This is clear evidence of how seemingly subtle things can make a big difference in everyday social interactions,” Dolcos said.

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