Handshaking Thread

On May 15 2020 01:11 xM(Z wrote:
hmm, blind people ...

Edit: ok, OK! ... you could tell if one is a cold or warm/hot type of person.

On May 15 2020 01:19 KwarK wrote:

Identification of reptilians for visually impaired people is certainly one case of handshaking over saluting at 6ft. But I’m not sure if the applicability to the modern business environment as reptilians are generally highly placed in organizations that are not always open to people with disabilities.

On May 15 2020 01:53 xM(Z wrote:
meh, passive-aggressive deflection disguised as a joke ... come on Kwarky; you wanted one and i gave you one.

but, since you're now changing contexts(the value of a handshake within a modern business environment), would information gathered from a handshake that is not immediately or consciously perceived, work?(ex: after a handshake people unconsciously sniff the hand that was shook, especially when it was done so by someone of the opposite sex; chemical communication and all that).

On May 15 2020 02:37 Vivax wrote:
Not gonna lie, the vegans among my acquaintances mostly have cold hands.

On May 15 2020 04:10 KwarK wrote:

Do you think that if you had to pick the vegans out a crowd of strangers you would have a higher success rate using a handshake than a salute? If so, how highly would you value this knowledge?

On May 15 2020 01:17 Nevuk wrote:
I don't see any value from handshaking that couldn't be better attained through something else.

On May 15 2020 04:10 KwarK wrote:

Do you think that if you had to pick the vegans out a crowd of strangers you would have a higher success rate using a handshake than a salute? If so, how highly would you value this knowledge?

On May 15 2020 10:55 Pangpootata wrote:
I am firmly in favor of continuing with the handshake tradition, so I can continue watching Donald Trump assert his superiority over other world leaders.

On May 15 2020 02:31 KwarK wrote:

I genuinely thought you were suggesting divining useful information from the temperature of a handshake as a joke and that I was playing along with your joke. I read your post as an amusing deconstructive parody intended to show how stupid that kind of analysis would be and I genuinely thought it was a good joke and enjoyed it. I wasn’t mocking you on purpose, I thought we were both mocking the same stupid idea you were jokingly proposing. It never occurred to me that you have some kind of actual system in which the temperature of someone’s hand tells you what kind of person they are.

How would that even work? There are a huge number of personality traits and I doubt you can feel the difference between 35.5 Celsius and 35.6, for example. I thought you were, as a joke, proposing a system of “this person feels warm blooded, probably mammalian” rather than seriously claiming an actual system. Please explain your temperature based system though. Which temperatures mean what, and how do you measure them?

Also stop sniffing people, it’s weird.

On May 15 2020 13:23 xM(Z wrote:
one uses jokes on people who can't conceive of certain things if for nothing else than to break the ice. once the audience loosen up, it becomes easier for information to be received and even if it's perceived as a joke, it is progress because the idea gets processed, thought of, rationalized.
best way to look at it is: meaningful banter. i mean, one handshake and you can definitely tell of someone has a fever; next step, run dude, just runnnnn ...

as to your query, are you unaware of the divide between people who feel cold to the touch and the ones that feel warm?, or you question whether or not that can be used to derive an useful trait/attribute?. i'll assume the later and just say, manners?, give that dude your jacket.
overall, i get from you that you don't value practical attributes. ex: touching(hands here) completes or gives credit to personal credentials: rough hands = craftsman vs soft hands = office rat (when hiring someone for a manual labor job, since everything else can be obfuscated or can/do contain lies(CV)).
+ Show Spoiler +

On May 15 2020 13:43 KwarK wrote:

I don't want to accidentally offend you by assuming you're not being 100% serious just because it sounds odd to me so I'm going to take your response literally.

If I'm understanding you correctly you're saying that the value of the handshake greeting is that you can greet someone, assess their body temperature, and then offer them a jacket if they're below a certain temperature? Does that happen often? How many spare jackets do you take to professional functions where you might meet a number of strangers? Is there an etiquette for subsequently recovering them or are these jackets gifts? Do you have them manufactured with your contact info on them like business cards or are they just whatever surplus jackets you might happen to have?

I apologize for the barrage of questions but your life is just so different from mine. I shake a hand because it's expected that I do so but I've never used it as an opportunity to assess whether an offer of a jacket might be appropriate.

On May 14 2020 03:38 Seeker wrote:
Don’t abolish handshakes. They’re too damn important to society. Instead, we need to evolve to the point where at least one party brings out a travel-sized hand sanitizer and allows all involved parties to use it before the handshake(s) can take place. There, problem solved.

On May 14 2020 04:13 Seeker wrote:

For me, personally, I like physical forms of contact when I meet and get to know a new person. And a handshake is often indicative of what kind of person you’re dealing with, so I think it definitely has a role in society that cannot just be ignored.

On May 14 2020 11:36 Seeker wrote:

I'm not superstitious about any arbitrary social customs.

On May 15 2020 14:26 Danglars wrote:

Let me copy in and echo Seeker's sentiments. A handshake isn't going to give you a ton of information, but it does give you an idea of "what kind of person you're dealing with." It's in the realm of greeting, body language, facial expression, vocal inflection, manner of dress. These aren't the kind of social and cultural cues that you can debate in black-and-white terms.

And honestly, I think the superstition/obvious joke is just trolls doing their schtick. Like obviously, you don't have to kiss or hug in a relationship when you really think about it etc etc.

On May 15 2020 05:18 NrG.Bamboo wrote:
Outside of the context of a pandemic, how do some of you see approaching more than one person? For instance, you go to a bar and see 6 familiar faces standing in a circle talking. Maybe you give a wave or a greeting to the group as a whole, maybe shake hands and introduce yourself to anyone you don't know. However, I know a lot of people who seem to need to shake each and every hand before engaging in conversation. On one hand (heh) I understand that it might feel odd to be snubbed (some person comes in an shakes 3 hands close to them and gives a nod to you, slightly further away), but the person entering the scenario just didn't want to keep shoving himself between people for the sake of being equally polite.

Is this "imbalanced greeting" something that ever crosses your minds?

EDIT: and for what it's worth I see it similarly to Drone. I think there are definite benefits to physical contact, but can only speak for myself: I love giving a hug to someone I'm excited to see, or happy to have met.

On May 15 2020 22:34 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

You are still shaking hands over in USA? Bars are still open? Anyways when meeting people just raise your hand/ wave/ say hello/ tilt head/nod/raise eyebrows/smile. Make a joke about not shaking hands. Why act like there is only one way to greet someone and it's with a handshake?

On May 15 2020 14:26 Danglars wrote:
Let me copy in and echo Seeker's sentiments. A handshake isn't going to give you a ton of information, but it does give you an idea of "what kind of person you're dealing with." It's in the realm of greeting, body language, facial expression, vocal inflection, manner of dress. These aren't the kind of social and cultural cues that you can debate in black-and-white terms.

On May 16 2020 02:02 Mohdoo wrote:
The one thing I take from handshakes is to know if the guy is insecure or not. If his handshake is too firm, he's extremely insecure. I know to be delicate with him and try to never make him think I am trying to take control of anything. If I need to take control, i do it delicately and try to make it seem like I am not. If you can convince an overly firm handshake guy they are being a big contributor, they will generally not make a stink.

However, I would say it is always pretty clear WITHOUT a handshake if that is true or not. A handshake gives me information, but that information is not unique. I get that information in lots of other ways.

I can't imagine a world where I get something out of a handshake that I wouldn't from a brief conversation.

On May 16 2020 03:35 TheYango wrote:

They absolutely are. A whole lot of things that humans have chalked up to "intuition" have proven to be meaningless bullshit in the past few decades when put up to rigorous objective analysis. The human brain is extremely good at assigning patterns and confirming biases based on random noise that has no actual value.

On May 16 2020 04:16 Archeon wrote:

The thing is that you can create a stronger impression by piling these things up, especially in a first meeting. You can get an impression of insecurity in a dialogue, but if the person you meet has a body language that speaks of confidence and speaks confidently it leaves a much stronger impression than if one of the two point towards insecurity. If you're in a meeting with 20 people and the person at the end of table didn't speak but still looks confident, looked you in the eye during the greeting and had a firm but not too firm handshake you are likely to think that they are in charge.

When meeting someone humans instinctively check body language and handshake is one way of asserting confidence, which we generally associate with competence, so it's useful if you want people to trust you. It's the reason politicians, swindlers and CEOs train these things.

Generally I like handshakes as an easy fairly natural way of establishing mutual physical contact, which creates trust. Obviously not during Corona. But I find it less awkward than French kissing or hugging f.e..

On May 16 2020 06:35 ASoo wrote:
We should follow the canine example and replace handshakes with mutual butt sniffing.

Change my mind.

On May 17 2020 01:36 Dracolich70 wrote:
A firm grip of the handshake tells a lot of the person and their character. Handshakes is great and respectful to all ages. It's step before a hug, which in turn is before a deep heartfelt hug.

People that can't tell anything from these things are cut off from valuable information, which is either caused by lack of emotional intelligence, bodily intelligence, and/or upbringing.

The bow from other cultures have the same measures, but they also regard to some measures of hierarchy, which a handshake doesn't.

On May 17 2020 02:45 KwarK wrote:

You say it tells a lot. Quantify that. You shake the hands of everyone in a room. I exchange salutes with everyone in the same room. What have they told you but not me?

On May 17 2020 02:45 KwarK wrote:

You say it tells a lot. Quantify that. You shake the hands of everyone in a room. I exchange salutes with everyone in the same room. What have they told you but not me?

If someone reluctantly shakes your hand, you already know he doesn't really give a damn

On May 17 2020 12:16 ASoo wrote:

Handshakes are an effective indicator of whether someone is good at navigating (and willing to navigate) arbitrary social signalling rituals.

Absent context, a handshake doesn't tell you anything. There's no intrinsic benefit or purpose to a handshake, it exists only to signal politeness, and it only signals politeness because we as a society collectively agree that it does so. That stands in contrast to something like, say, holding the door, which also signals politeness, but does so based on something intrinsic to the action (it signals politeness because it's a symbolic way of doing someone a favor). However, there are enough people like Dracolich70 and [UoN]Sentinel in the world that, despite being intrinsically useless, it is useful in the context of society to be good at handshakes, so that you can impress people like Dracolich70 and [UoN]Sentinel, and they will like you and maybe hire you or whatever.

And being good at handshakes is kind of hard. Too firm and you're an overbearing jerk, too limp and you're a wuss. Too much eye contact and you're creepy and need to tone it down a notch, not enough eye contact and you come off as nervous or weak. And nobody will ever give you clear feedback about getting it wrong, so you have to infer your feedback from subtle reactions and body language. This is not an accident: The whole point of social rituals like this is to be difficult enough to get right that only people who have the skill of figuring out opaque, arbitrary social rituals will get them right.

Thus, when someone like Dracolich70 and [UoN]Sentinel shakes your hand, they can judge the quality of your handshake, and make inferences about what kind of person you are. If you get it right, they know that you're both socially aware enough to figure out how to handshake properly (despite the difficulty), and you're the kind of person who is willing to play along with arbitrary social rituals in order to fit in. If you get it wrong, they know you're either too socially inept to learn how to handshake properly, or you're the kind of grumpy contrarian who refuses to go along with arbitrary social rituals because they make no sense.

This is useful information! If you run a company full of conformist boyscout types, and you want to avoid hiring nerds, misanthropes, and weirdos who won't fit in, then a handshake is an excellent indicator of that!

A salute doesn't provide the same kind of information (in mainstream western culture, at least) because we don't have the same kind of norms built up around it. However, other cultures do have norms about salutes - for instance, I bet military service members can infer stuff about each other from the quality of their salutes. But I and my peers can't, because we haven't built up sufficiently standardized norms around saluting to reliably know if someone is violating them.

One prominent social development of modernity was the rise in importance of the individual as a discrete entity with personal rights and boundaries. In terms of the social history of the senses, this meant that people had to take greater care not to trangress the sensory space of others with untoward odors, noises, or touches. As the most apparently detached of the senses, sight was often the most socially acceptable sense. This was particularly true in the context of urban centers, in which people daily came across strangers whom they could not touch or smell, to whom they could not even speak with propriety, but at whom they could look. In fact the saying "look but don't touch" became a sensory motto of the modern age.

The elevation of sight in modernity was often presented in evolutionary terms as the final stage in a sensory and social development from barbarism to civilization. Civilized people, it was held, perceived and appreciated the world primarily through their eyes. Primitive people, by contrast, were imagined to rely just as much on their noses and fingers for knowledge of the world. Charles Darwin gave this notion of a social progress from the "lower" senses to the "higher" a biological basis by suggesting in his theory of evolution that sight became evermore important to humans as they evolved from animals and learned to walk upright and take their noses off the ground. Sigmund Freud later psychologized this theory and claimed that individuals went through similar sensory stages in the transition from infancy to adulthood.

As the above indicates, in many cases the elevation of sight was accompanied by a diminution in the importance of the other senses, particularly the proximity senses. Smell, taste, and touch were divested of much of their former cosmological and physical powers and were relegated to the cultural realm of personal pleasure or displeasure.

On May 18 2020 01:13 xM(Z wrote:
for the sake of transparency, openness and accountability, Kwark, you are around here: right?(maybe less embellished/more straightforward but similar nonetheless).

On May 18 2020 01:43 KwarK wrote:

I'm not sure I understand your point but I'm still of the opinion that you should stop sniffing your hand immediately after shaking hands with women.

On May 18 2020 01:54 xM(Z wrote:
point was you're just like them: rationalizing and defending your own culture.
your failure to engage in the first person is off-putting; even when joking.

(at least i'm touching women instead of creepily staring at them to gather intell)

On May 18 2020 02:23 KwarK wrote:

I'm great at handshakes, I just don't follow them up with a discrete hand sniff because "pheromones" like you do.

On May 18 2020 02:18 Zambrah wrote:


I wouldn't be so quick to brag about touching women in this context, lol.

Also, if someone is quick to shake my hand I mostly find that off-putting, about the only time I think it's appropriate to shake hands is in a business hand shake but otherwise it tells me the person is weirdly engaged with inane social norms even in more casual contexts, like someone who requests a salad fork for their McDonald's salad if that makes sense.

I get less info from a handshake than I do from the way someone greets, like Hi, or Hello, or Salutations Fellow Human, etc.

Words are just better for communication than grabbing someone else's appendage imo.

On May 18 2020 02:30 xM(Z wrote:
yea, deflection + passive aggressive distraction; gadamnit dude, gl.

@Zambrah: that tells me you're a bit of a germaphobe; the rest(of your post) is its rationalization.

i don't usually shake hands but if someone offers it's fine by me, even in these times.

On May 18 2020 02:37 KwarK wrote:

You were doing this weird thing where you take my argument (that a handshake gives you no information beyond the ability to conform to an arbitrary custom which has no marginal advantages over any other arbitrary custom we could replace a handshake with) and substituting it with an implication that I'm some kind of autist who can't shake hands with people and creepily stare at women. That's a pretty fucking dumb thing to do, especially when I'm a successful professional who manages people, holds meetings, and shakes hands all the fucking time while you, by your own admission, like to sniff your hands after touching women.

On May 18 2020 02:55 xM(Z wrote:
ahahahaha, lol.
1) blind people, that's a straight up loss as far as your argument goes and it's funny;
2) provided links to a study showing people sniffing their hands after a handshake while being totally unaware of doing it; what info they'd gather from it i wouldn't know, but you can go with the researchers theories on chemosignaling.

that's 2-0 and all you have is a couple of unfunny jabs at me; i don't know man, i'm good.

(the "implications" you're talking about there come from your own insecurities so there, you're on your own)

Edit: for the sake of transparency, openness and accountability - i believe you're a slave to your culture and based on that, your argument has no merits. it's not objective enough.

On May 17 2020 03:22 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Feels very weird. The less physical contact I've made with someone the less acquainted I feel with them.

Also I just don't respect any man with a weak handshake

On May 18 2020 03:22 Fleetfeet wrote:
This thread does not feel productive in regards to discussing handshakes. It's like a boxing ring where people come to box Kwark over something neither party truly gives a shit about because everyone's bored and it is amusing.

Does anyone have an actual argument to field? Sentinel, what's your alternative to handshakes that still lets you flex on people with your purported manliness, yet is more hygenic than handshaking? Chest-bumping? Mutual bird-flipping? I wanna know what the next evolution in socially competitive greeting is.

On May 18 2020 00:33 KwarK wrote:

This is an excellent summation of my point, that the only information you get is how good they are at doing an arbitrary gesture which could be replaced by a more hygienic gesture without intrinsic loss, assuming society agreed on the new social custom.

On May 18 2020 05:40 Fleetfeet wrote:
Oh god, yes. Give me the wookie yells. The subtle nuance required to be accurate and intimidating yet not so accurate as to come across as a weak nerd, is beautiful.

I think the ultimate breakdown is to just cut to the chase and display your genitals. I feel like I read a book in English classes that referenced that. Oryx and Crake, maybe?

On May 18 2020 03:29 KwarK wrote:

The example you gave of blind people is that they could feel if the person they were shaking hands with was cold and, based upon that, offer them a jacket. I can't think of many professional situations where I would bring spare jackets and start going "You feel cold bro, you want a jacket? I have jackets". But I gave you the benefit of the doubt and invited you to tell me about some of those. You declined to do so but are, for some reason, still insisting that blind people feeling how cold someone is is totally a reasonable use of the handshake.

Sensory Hierarchy: In the 19th Century, Lorenz Oken postulated a hierarchy of the senses:

1. European 'eye man'
Asian 'ear man'
Native American 'nose man'
Australian 'tongue man'
African 'skin man'
(Gould, 1985, pp. 204-205, Classen, 93, 405)

Reasoning Informing the Hierarchy

Anthropologists’ Perspective:
Reluctance of researchers from a variety of fields to go beyond the audio-visual and recover the importance of other senses is due not only to the relative marginalisation of these senses in the modern West, but to the racist tradition of regarding the 'lower senses' as predominating among 'primitive' non-Westeners

Early scholars interested in depicting the 'animalistic' significance of smell

Friedrich Schiller: as long as man is still a savage he enjoys by means of the tactile senses rather than through the higher sense of sight and hearing

On May 18 2020 14:14 xM(Z wrote:
gl coming up with a new standard ad-hoc and on the spot; you'd need to create and impose a new culture.

On May 21 2020 03:40 BisuDagger wrote:
I believe that handshaking can give information to people who have a heightened sense of awareness or have trained in learning what handshakes indicate. I know Sherlock Holmes is fictional, but there are people out there who share attributes of his intelligence. Holmes often learns a lot about people through handshakes in his stories. I think there is a time and place for handshakes and that we can participate in them as long as we have regard for when it is appropriate or not to issue such a formality.

https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/03/can-you-learn-to-dissect-peoples-personalitie/
https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/04/what-can-we-tell-about-someones-personality-f/

On May 21 2020 03:40 BisuDagger wrote:
I believe that handshaking can give information to people who have a heightened sense of awareness or have trained in learning what handshakes indicate. I know Sherlock Holmes is fictional, but there are people out there who share attributes of his intelligence. Holmes often learns a lot about people through handshakes in his stories. I think there is a time and place for handshakes and that we can participate in them as long as we have regard for when it is appropriate or not to issue such a formality.

https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/03/can-you-learn-to-dissect-peoples-personalitie/
https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/04/what-can-we-tell-about-someones-personality-f/

On May 21 2020 03:52 Emnjay808 wrote:
This thread is 4-pages of pure content.

Both sides make valid points. In the original discussion I mentioned that u could gather “a lot of information”. I exaggerated a bit, but my point was that first impressions are very important for some people—in a professional and social setting.

On May 21 2020 08:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Thank you, thank you Do people actually touch foreheads when they bow? I would worry that I would accidentally smack someone in the head with my head, since we can't actually see how close our heads are from each other as we bow down.

On May 21 2020 08:02 BisuDagger wrote:


I actually agree with what you are saying too and almost didn't make my original post. I think it's fair to believe that some people really can gain knowledge from a hand shake, but it is also rational to say any conclusion garnered from a handshake is ignoring the whole story. Maybe it's best to say that a handshake is an great way to form an hypothesis of a person, and from there everything you do is an attempt to disprove your hypothesis.

On May 21 2020 08:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Two alpha males stare at each other from across the room, and lower their heads as they assume the position. They start to kick their feet backwards off the ground, like bulls preparing to charge. It may seem odd and unnecessary, but in the year 2030, this game of chicken is how Americans say hello.



That's very interesting to me... I've bowed in deference before, but from a safe enough distance where there was no physical contact. I guess both touching and not touching can be seen as respectful, given the context and the individuals.

On May 22 2020 21:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

First impressions are first impressions and first impressions do no more than to confirm the biases of the person who is taking that impression. The information imparted is essentially random noise. A few militaries used psych evaluations in team building excercises back when it was all the rage to determine who will be best fit for leadership postions and the like and predict those who did best in the evaluations will be promoted furthest, and then came back years later for confirmation and found out it was all a load of bollocks. So it is with handshakes; they tell you nothing beyond perhaps handshaker's ability to fit with local cultural norms. You will tell more about a person from asking their attitude towards handshaking, than shaking their hands.

I've done enough handshakes in professional contexts to know that I really don't learn anything about people from the experience. That's not a thing. When people talk about what you can learn from a handshake it reminds me 100% of archaic dating "advice" that tries to give you surefire ways of interpreting vague signals that really don't necessarily mean anything. I never found any of this social wizardry to be useful, in fact it was always the opposite. As soon as I stopped caring about what things are "supposed" to mean, I started getting much more useful information in my own way.

I've never taken a handshake to indicate anything other than a willingness/ability to conform to the accepted professional environment.