title: Hand gestures and perceived influence in small group interaction.
abstract: A laboratory study was carried out to establish the relative importance of verbal and gestural behavior, as well as their interaction, for perceived social influence in more or less competitive small groups. Forty women (psychology students) participated in leaderless small group discussions of different sizes (four-member and eight-member): at the end, each member rated the perceived influence in decision-making of every other member. Verbal dominance coding is based on traditional quantitative conversational dominance (number of talk turns). Gestural coding (conversational, ideational, object-adaptor, self-adaptor gestures) is based on classical gesture classifications. Beside a substantial effect of verbal dominance, the main result is that frequency of object-adaptors and conversational (only in large groups) and ideational (in both small and large groups) gestures increases perceived influence scores particularly when the verbal dominance of the speaker is low.
authors: Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Department of Cultural and Educational Studies, Via Milazzo 11 B, 00185 Rome, Italy. fmaricchiolo@uniroma3.it
authors: Fridanna
authors: F
authors: Maricchiolo
authors: Stefano
authors: S
authors: Livi
authors: Marino
authors: M
authors: Bonaiuto
authors: Augusto
authors: A
authors: Gnisci
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D005868:Gestures; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D008297:Male; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D012938:Social Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D055815:Young Adult