The Handshake: A Negotiating Tool? (A Study)

By Donald L. Swanson

The handshake, as a social ritual, has been around for a very long time. 

In days of olde, the handshake probably served a dual role:

• as a sign of peaceful greeting; and
• as a way to assure that the other person isn’t holding a dagger or hiding one in a sleeve—which is why the handshake became more of a forearm grab in Roman empire days.

The handshake survives in recent times as a peaceful greeting ritual—though, it fell into disrepute during the distancing-days of the Covid pandemic.

Still . . . the handshake serves a valuable role in social interactions—even in less-than-friendly ones, like negotiations.  In fact, that’s the very point of a study report titled,

• “Handshaking Promotes Deal-Making by Signaling Cooperative Intent.”[Fn. 1]

What follows is a summary of that report.

Handshaking and Negotiations

Children in conflict are often told by parents to “shake hands and make up,” suggesting a belief in the cooperation-inducing properties of this simple gesture.

While adults believe that handshakes signal cooperation, they don’t really expect a handshake to affect the outcomes of their own negotiations.  But the study shows that handshakes can-and-do result in real negotiation cooperation.

–Experiments & Results

Across multiple negotiation experiments using executives, MBA students and undergraduates, the study shows that handshaking:

• signals a cooperative intention; and
• increases perceptions of warmth and cooperation between competing parties.

Most compelling, the study shows that, even when cooperation hurts one’s own outcome in a negotiation context, shaking hands:

• increases cooperation by reducing lying; and
• results in more equitable agreements.

–Reason & Conclusion

The study’s experiments reveal this reason why handshaking promotes cooperation:

• it makes people ascribe cooperative motives to their counterpart.

The conclusion of the experiments is this:

• the simple ritual of shaking hands can be a powerful gesture to promote cooperation in negotiations.

Implications

Here are some implications of the study’s findings.

Research shows that people behave cooperatively in negotiations when they have cooperative goals and expect their counterpart to have cooperative goals too.  The study finds, similarly, that a handshake helps competing parties develop cooperative goals.

Handshaking is a social ritual that carries symbolic meaning.  Research finds positive effects from social rituals—such as improving self control, reducing anxiety, increasing positive emotions, inducing pro-sociality in groups, and creating social connection.

The study shows that the simple handshake ritual can create the same types of positive outcomes, including:

• enhanced cooperation—even in antagonistic settings like negotiations.

Mis-Performance

The study also examines, by contrast, the consequence of mis-performance: i.e., when one person extends a hand to shake and the other rejects the gesture.

The study finds that a mismatch occurs in the social script, when an extended hand is rejected.  Such mismatch reduces cooperation and reduces perceptions of the rejecter’s warmth.

The study conducts an experiment in an interactive science museum with 73 pairs of strangers.  The two people in each stranger pair introduce themselves to each other, have a short conversation together, and complete a survey evaluating their pair-partner’s likeability and trustworthiness.

All of the participants are instructed to either shake hands or not.  Here’s what the study finds:

• pairs who shake hands have more positive impressions than those who do not; 
• the most negative evaluations come from “mismatched” pairs—where one person attempts to shake hands and the other rejects the shake gesture; and
• evaluations do not differ by which participant’s proffered hand is rejected—both parties have a negative evaluation in the mismatched pairs.

Conclusion

The handshake is a useful tool in all social interactions, to enhance the social dynamic and to improve cooperative action.

According to the study report discussed above, the handshake tool has the same benefits in negotiations—even when the negotiations are among less-than-friendly participants. 

• So, every negotiator should, when possible, shake the hand of the opposing negotiators at the beginning of negotiations, for the very purpose of gaining such benefits.

By contrast, the study shows we should never reject a proffered hand—ever or for any reason—when a positive social interaction is desired.

 ——————

Footnote 1.  The study report is by Juliana Schroeder of University of California–Berkeley, Jane L. Risen of University of Chicago, and Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School.  It is published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes, Vol. 116, No. 5, 743-768 (2019).

** If you find this article of value, please feel free to share. If you’d like to discuss, let me know.