Handshaking, gender, personality, and first impressions

Although people's handshakes are thought to reflect their personality and i nfluence our first impressions of them, these relations have seldom been fo rmally investigated. One hundred twelve participants had their hand shaken twice by 4 trained coders (2 men and 2 women) and completed 4 personality m easures. The participants' handshakes were stable and consistent across tim e and coders. There were also gender differences on most of the handshaking characteristics. A firm handshake was related positively to extraversion a nd emotional expressiveness and negatively to shyness and neuroticism; it w as also positively related to openness to experience, but only for women. F inally, handshake characteristics were related to the impressions of the pa rticipants formed by the coders. These results demonstrate that personality traits, assessed through self-report, can predict specific behaviors asses sed by trained observers. The pattern of relations among openness, gender, handshaking, and first impressions suggests that a firm handshake may be an effective form of self-promotion for women.