The heartfelt gesture positively affects perceptions of personality

The “heartfelt” gesture (which involves placing one or both hands flat against the center of the chest) is associated with experiencing social emotions such as gratitude and feeling moved, and serves as a nonverbal cue of one’s connection to and oneness with the emotions of others. To date, little research has evaluated how individuals who display the heartfelt gesture are perceived by others. In this study, researchers sourced five images of women naturally displaying the heartfelt gesture in response to positive news from YouTube videos. Research assistants then created a control condition by digitally Photoshopping the gesture out of the images. Participants (N = 207) were randomly assigned to one of 10 images (five images with the gesture present and five with the gesture deleted) and asked to estimate the target’s personality using a variety of personality items. Targets were perceived as more empathic, sincere, warm, and competent when pictured performing the gesture than when they were not, suggesting that the gesture categorically alters person perception in terms of universal dimensions of personality. The present study provides support for the role of the heartfelt gesture in signaling a communal orientation, necessitating further research into the gesture’s associations with kama muta, empathy, and other social self-transcendent emotions which help facilitate and maintain the social bonds we form with others.