Talk with your hands to be more persuasive

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📝 Context

Topic: Ads | Messaging & Copy | Social Media
For: B2B. Can be tested for B2C
Research date: September 2025
Universities: University of Southern California, University of Pennsylvania, University of British Columbia

You’re pitching a new project to a client. You’ve rehearsed it endless times and feel ready, but somehow your presentation feels weak. 

It’s not the script, you know that’s strong. It’s also not the project itself, that’s exactly what you had discussed with your client.

It feels more about how you present things…

Science says you might not be using your hands enough.

P.S.: Looks like us Italians* have an inherent advantage here, given our natural heavy use of hand gestures**

*Yes, I’m Italian! 🇮🇹 Despite my Scottish father’s surname, I was born in Milan to my Italian mother and grew up for half of my life there. I know, you probably wouldn’t guess (until you see my hand gestures 🤌)

**This made me curious: Why do Italians use so many hand gestures? It seems that no one knows for sure, but one of the likely reasons is that we were historically heavy traders and were frequently occupied by foreign powers. Gestures helped overcome language barriers (remember, Italy is less than 200 years old, younger than the US!).

📈 Recommendation

When presenting something (e.g. a new product, a client pitch), make sure to support your speech with hand gestures (e.g. holding your hands up and moving them as you speak).

For best results, relate your gestures directly to what you are saying (e.g. drawing a circle in the air when explaining a circular process).

People will perceive your speech as more persuasive and easier to understand, and have higher intentions to buy. 

🎓 Findings

• Speakers using hand gestures are more persuasive and viewers are more likely to respond positively to their speech.

• As part of an analysis of 2,184 TED talks, 200,000 clips, and two experiments, researchers found that:

  • For each doubling of hand movements, likes on the YouTube videos of the TED talks were 5.18% higher 

  • When an entrepreneur made a circular motion on their face to introduce a face cream, people responded 9% more positively (e.g. liking the speaker, the product, and being more interested in buying the product) compared to no motion, and 7.7% more positively than simply pointing at their face

• The positive effect is:

  • Stronger if the gestures are related to what the speakers are saying (e.g. Mixing motions for a whisk, mimicking brushing one’s teeth for an electric toothbrush)

  • Stronger, the more gestures are used

  • Consistent for digital products (e.g. an app), and both pleasurable (e.g. entertainment) and functional products (e.g. a water filtration system)

  • Weaker when the content is already very easy to understand (e.g. depicting an everyday item or a simple concept)

🧠 Why it works

• When watching someone speak, we pay attention to their body language, not only to what they say.

• Tone of voice, posture, and smiles, can make us find a person more trustworthy, powerful or sociable and influence our decision to buy. 

• When hand movements visually represent spoken content (e.g. moving the finger upward to represent a trend going up), we understand the message more easily.

• When we understand something better, we see the speaker as more competent, which makes them more persuasive.

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✋ Limitations

• The analysis was done on expert speakers (e.g. TED Talks), the effect is likely the same for less experienced presenters such as influencers, sales, and service employees.

• The effect should be the same for real-time conversations but only videos were tested.

• The study only looked at Western cultures where gestures are more common. People from Eastern cultures tend to use fewer gestures and might not see them positively.

• It’s unclear whether and when exaggerated movements (e.g. whole body movements like spinning around) might backfire because they are distractive, or at what point the threshold of too many gestures is, if there is one.

👀 Real-life example

Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta glasses and the neural band (on his wrist in the image below) in a presentation. To explain what they do, he tried to use certain gestures. 

❌ Issue: His illustrative gestures seem unnatural (see how he represented brain signals in the screenshot), and probably made his speech less persuasive.

✅ Solution: Zuckerberg could improve his future product demos by using gestures strategically, for example:

• He could visually represent the objects he mentions (e.g. make two circles with his fingers for glasses).

• He could also show abstract concepts more visually (e.g. In this case, pointing his finger from his head to his wrist).

• Introducing metaphors in his speech (both verbal and visual) would further boost its persuasiveness, making people more likely to remember it.

• Finally, using a louder tone of voice would make his speech even more persuasive.

🔍 Study type

Online experiments and market observations (of 2,184 TED Talks on YouTube)

📖 Research

Talking with Your Hands: How Hand Gestures Influence Communication. Journal of Marketing Research. (September 2025)

🏫 Researchers

• Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo. Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

• Jonah Berger. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

• Mi Zhou. Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

🎁 Bonus mini-insight

Read the full insight here (for paid Platform members only).

🎓 Insight: What makes a voice persuasive

📈 Recommendation: Make sure your voice (or AI voiceover) uses these three characteristics:

• Focused (concentrated on what you’re saying; using a low-pitch voice helps)

• Not stressed (confident of what you’re saying)

• Emotionally stable (calm and relaxed)

Voices with these traits are more persuasive.

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