Researchers studying communication have found that how we move our hands while speaking may matter more than many people expect.
Their work, recently published in the Journal of Marketing Research, explored whether gestures contribute to how competent and persuasive a speaker appears, even when the spoken message stays the same.
Mi Zhou, a digital market research scientist at the University of British Columbia and a co-author of the study, told in a Statement that delivery can “have a big impact on persuasiveness,” even when the verbal content doesn’t change.
What the researchers found
The research team analyzed more than two thousand TED Talks using automated video tools to compare hand movements with audience engagement.
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They also tested how viewers rated speakers in controlled sales-pitch videos where the gestures varied but the script did not.
Their conclusion was that only some gestures actually help.
Movements that visually illustrate an idea, such as showing how large an object is or indicating a direction, gave audiences both a verbal and a visual pathway to understand the message.
According to the study, speakers who used these “illustrative” gestures were consistently seen as more knowledgeable and easier to follow.
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By contrast, motions that simply pointed to an object or involved unfocused, habitual movements did not measurably increase audience engagement or comprehension.
Why it matters for everyday speaking
The team described their project as the first large-scale attempt to evaluate gestures using AI-driven analysis.
Their findings suggest that purposeful, descriptive hand movements can reinforce speech and make information easier to absorb.
For anyone who needs to communicate complex ideas, marketers, public speakers, teachers, or simply people trying to explain something at the dinner table, the research implies that clarity isn’t only about choosing the right words. It’s also about how you physically guide your listeners through the idea.
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Sources: Popular Science, Journal of Marketing Research, and Statement.
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