Why We Can't Stop Our Hands From Moving When We Talk

thegiamarcos (55) in psychology • 7 years ago (edited)

I once went on a date with a guy who noticed how I moved my hands a lot as I spoke that when I noticed how he was noticing it, I accidentally almost broke the glass beside me because I just couldn't stop my hands from moving frantically as I was telling him some interesting story. Ever had an experience like this? Or maybe something a little similar at least? I know I'm just really clumsy it happened to me, but you get how somehow, your hand gestures when speaking get really out of hand (pun intended), right? Now, I'm here to tell you why:

At Loss For Words

When we are passionate about what we're talking about, we always search for the most accurate words to describe that exact feeling we had from the experience being narrated, and often we don't really find those words. So to fill in those missing words, our hands involuntarily make gestures or simply reflect on such crisis as a mechanism to still be able to send the message to the one/s we're speaking with.

I remember, during that date I mentioned, my date and I were actually having some philosophical discourse, and I was so into expressing my view which fortunately matched his (god, otherwise I might have not just almost broken the glass but even throw the whole table off speaking and all). The mini crisis at that time though was that this person barely understood the terms I used and in order to make him understand my point, my hands struggled along in search for a simpler yet still accurate term.

It's a Bilingual Thing

If you didn't know yet, I'm a Filipino, and almost everyone in the Philippines is bilingual. It's a strictly implemented thing in our education system--making sure that students are taught how to speak English as early as possible.

My parents even taught me how to speak and read English first that I had some trouble fitting in my peers when I was in preschool. I also cried a lot of times reciting our own Filipino alphabet, because I couldn't even make it to the fourth letter without being corrected in a harsh manner (well, I kept repeating the same mistakes, so the teacher was annoyed as hell!).

Now, hand gestures help us bilinguals express our thoughts, because despite the broader choice of words as we have two languages in our heads, sometimes the person we converse with only understands one or we even mix up the words from both languages ourselves that nothing really comes out our mouths at all. Also, like what advocates for Filipino languages say, we don't really master either English or our own language in the way the education system implements a strict curriculum for the said foreign language. It's true, so we resort to letting our hands do the talking instead.

It's All About the Beat

Do you notice how in formal talks or lectures like TED Talks, the speakers usually make hand gestures? They do know their words, and they have probably rehearsed their piece several times, so what could be causing that then?

It's actually a possible way of shaking off the nerves or simply emphasizing a point. You see, as a speaker myself,
I tend to do more hand gestures when I feel a little nerve kicking in. It helps me stay focused while researching the words to use as I probably kinda lost them when the nerve tried to holla at me.

Luckily, such nerve moment actually gives more life to the whole presentation as according to a human behavior consultancy called Science of People:

“Jazz hands rock.” Van Edwards noted a correlation between the number of hand gestures a speaker makes in a talk and the number of views the talk receives.

The study also found that script kills the vibe, and I guess as I always go unrehearsed like that and handle it with jazz hands, and still manage to deliver well, I always make a pretty good impression. Well I really do that that when we are asked to be grouped for some speech thing, people go on a tug of war for me (yes kids, that's humility, and please don't try that at home).

Now, they don't call it jazz hands for nothing. At least now that's what I'm going to make you believe. See, when we talk, we don't want to be just like a boring tree, so we instinctively make hand gestures to produce a sort of beat that would keep the people listening to us engaged and ourselves less anxious.

Conclusion

It's perfectly normal to have very active hands when speaking. A lot of studies even show these days that people who have those distinct hand habits when talking are actually passionate, warm, intelligent, etc., basically positive things. It's just that when you are as clumsy as me--and everyone knows how my clumsiness attacks at the most crucial times of my life like during a date--well you just gotta keep the hand on hand (pun intended again).