When we have a conversation with someone, we don’t worry about what to do with our hands. But when we get up in front of an audience to present, we suddenly worry quite a lot about our gestures. Why is that? What is it about gesturing in a more formal setting that unnerves us?
Gestures are hand and arm movements that we use to help us communicate. When we know a little more about them, we can start to understand how we “talk with our hands.”
They Are Part of Communication
How exactly do we use our hands to communicate? Three experts at the University of Chicago are trying to answer that question. They formed the Center for Gesture, Sign, and Language to study where gesture stops and where sign language begins. Their research can help us to better understanding what gestures really are.
One of those experts is professor and psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow, who says, “Gesture is not a language, but it works along with language to convey our ideas. Gesture is part of the communicative act, and it’s important to psychologists who use it as a window into the mind.” So gestures can’t stand alone to communicate like sign language can. But they can accompany other forms of language to enhance and expand it.
They Help Us Think
One study found that it’s harder to tell a story if you can’t gesture. Researchers Frances H. Rauscher, Robert M. Krauss, and Yihsiu Chen published a study called, “Gesture, Speech, and Lexical Access: The Role of Lexical Movements in Speech Production.” In this study, they had participants watch a cartoon chase between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Afterward, they had to tell someone else what happened during the cartoon. Some participants were allowed free movement and told the story with no problem. However, others had their arms strapped to a chair during the retelling. Researchers found that the participants who were not able to gesture had more pauses and more fillers like “uh.” In addition, they noticed a significant relationship between gesturing and spatial words. For words that indicated movement like “running” or “falling,” the restricted participants slowed down significantly, having more trouble communicating what had happened.
This demonstrates a connection between our thought process and our hands. We know it’s not a good idea to present with our hands in our pockets. But now we have scientific proof that it can actually inhibit our thought process.
They Are Spontaneous
The study published in Psychological Science referenced above begins with this sentence: “Conversational gestures are unplanned, fluent hand movements that often accompany spontaneous speech.” This definition deals primarily with the gestures we use in conversation. However, we know that the best presentations feel like elevated conversation. So it would make sense that the gestures we use during more formal situations would mimic those that we use in conversation. And we see by this definition that conversational gestures are “unplanned.” Speakers should avoid gestures which feel planned or rehearsed. Why? Because these will feel unnatural and therefore inauthentic to the audience.
Because of their spontaneous nature, gestures are one of the clues humans use to understand others and to explore what we really think and feel. That’s especially true when their words seem to contradict their nonverbal communication. So gesture are vital pieces of the communication puzzle because they occur at an unedited, instinctual level.
So we know that gestures come alongside other forms of communication. We know that they help us convey our ideas more easily. And we know that they occur spontaneously. Gestures play an important role in human communication, allowing us to truly “talk with our hands.”
The methods we employ at Ethos3 are backed by research and are used by some of the best in the world. Ready to master the art of presenting?
