BigThnk:

• “A team of researchers from the Netherlands found that hands gestures, when used strategically, influence how certain words are heard.
• Participants were 20% more likely to hear and interpret the words being spoken when accompanied by a matching hand gesture, and 40% as likely to hear the wrong word when the gestures did not match.
• Previous research has suggested that certain hand gestures can signal extraversion and dominance, and that speaking with gestures in general tends to lead to being evaluated as warm, agreeable, and energetic.
• …The team recorded the volunteers as they viewed the video recordings, questioning the participants afterward about what they had seen and heard. They found that the participants were more impacted by syllables spoken in conjunction with hand gestures: In 20 percent of the cases the viewer was more likely to have heard and interpreted the word being spoken when accompanied by a hand gesture. Interestingly, however, participants were 40 percent more likely to hear the wrong sound when a mismatch between the word spoken and the hand gesture occurred…”