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Speaker’s Hand Gestures Can Modulate Receiver’s Negative Reactions to a Disagreeable Verbal Message

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Toward Robotic Socially Believable Behaving Systems - Volume I

Part of the book series: Intelligent Systems Reference Library ((ISRL,volume 105))

Abstract

Here we report the results of an experiment aimed to investigate the effects of different hand gestures on emotional and attitudinal reactions of receivers through the measure of physiological indexes (facial muscles activity, heart rate, and eye blinking). A videotape was shown to 50 University students, in which an actress presented a speech with a disagreeable verbal content, namely the proposal of increasing University fees. The verbal message included the presentation of four arguments (two strong and two weak) in support of the proposal. During her speech, the actress manipulated “Gesture Type” in order to achieve five conditions (ideational gestures, discursive gestures, object- and self-adaptors, and no gesture as control). ANOVAs reveal that the different type of gestures differently modulate the negative impact of disagreeable verbal content on receivers in different moments of the speech and interact with strong or weak arguments in determining negative reactions to the disagreeable verbal message. In particular, it seems that discursive (conversational and ideational) gestures are more capable to counteract the negative effect of the arguments. These results give a further contribution to a better understanding of the crucial role of gestures in providing characteristics of speech perception, also in terms of persuasion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, University of Roma Tre, Rome, Italy

    Fridanna Maricchiolo

  2. Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy

    Augusto Gnisci, Mariangela Cerasuolo & Gianluca Ficca

  3. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Marino Bonaiuto

Authors
  1. Fridanna Maricchiolo
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  2. Augusto Gnisci
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  3. Mariangela Cerasuolo
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  4. Gianluca Ficca
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  5. Marino Bonaiuto
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Correspondence to Fridanna Maricchiolo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Seconda Università di Napoli and IIASS, Caserta, Italy

    Anna Esposito

  2. Data Sci. Inst., Faculty of Sci. & Tech., Bournemouth University, Poole, United Kingdom

    Lakhmi C. Jain

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Maricchiolo, F., Gnisci, A., Cerasuolo, M., Ficca, G., Bonaiuto, M. (2016). Speaker’s Hand Gestures Can Modulate Receiver’s Negative Reactions to a Disagreeable Verbal Message . In: Esposito, A., Jain, L. (eds) Toward Robotic Socially Believable Behaving Systems - Volume I . Intelligent Systems Reference Library, vol 105. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31056-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31056-5_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31056-5

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