On the importance of gestures in public speaking | Hacker News Reader

On the importance of gestures in public speaking

andrespagella.com

63 pointsmapagella24 comments

Gesticulation helps the speaker as well. A recent thesis (unpublished) in my graduate program examined the effect of allowing a lecturer to move around and gesticulate vs. sitting still at a microphone. There were positive effects both in the viewer seeing the movement (not surprising) and, more interestingly, the lecture recorded with movement was better (subjective rating, comprehension) even when the viewer could not see the speaker.

Very interesting, sounds similar to Amy Cuddy talking about body language affecting our mind/behavior. http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...

Will you post more (the thesis) when it becomes available?

If you can, please post the published paper to HN! It sounds very interesting and public speaking stuff seems always appreciated here.

I ran a similar, although not so scientific experiment a few years ago. I tried to pick up girls in clubs with and without gestures when I was talking to them. This was over a one month period. The actual numbers are classified, but gestures won.

I don't think 1 to 0 is really a reliable result.

It reminds me of the "suggestions" given to Dwight in the Office (when has to give a public presentation in S02E07), where he's given a video of Mussolini as an example of a speaker with a great body language to emulate - so he does, and it ends up with a wild cheer from his audience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwights_Speech

If you haven't seen it, you should - if only to look at the arms movement and remember it's usually not a good idea to look like a fascist dictator when you give a public presentation in the real life!

Hah, that's a good one! I haven't seen that one. That's exactly why I insist in being careful on how you use gestures - they need to be very subtle, otherwise you'll look, like you've just said, like a fascist dictator :)

Indeed - the enthusiasm to use body gestures should be limited to a level compatible with the audience.

As the author explained, it depends on the audience culture.

Suggesting a liberated use of body language to a hacker audience may result in many Dwight-like performances...

(good tip - don't stroke the table with your fist closed)

Do you have an example of a talk by Zuckerberg that you find brilliant?

Zuckerberg being a terrible speaker (2010): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3hu3iG8B2g

Zuckerberg being a brilliant speaker (2011): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OQQ4E2k0Mk

Notice how he seems to be more confident and relaxed when he speaks. Unlike in the AllThingsD interview, this time he uses pauses and gestures effectively as well.

Just to be clear, that's not Zuckerberg for the first five minutes in the 2011 video.

I don't know if the important thing is gestures per se so much as it is a sense of the theatrical.

Actors are unique in the performing arts because they "play" two instruments simultaneously. The first and most obvious one is their voice. But the second is their body -- how they move, carry themselves, and relate physically to the other people on stage. A great actor can take the same words another actor just read and turn them into a completely different character, just by the way they use their body.

When people think about public speaking they mostly focus on the voice, but just like in acting the body is important too. The great speakers know how to use the voice and the body together to reinforce the messages each sends to the audience.

If you want to develop your skills with voice and body, acting classes can be a great way to do that, as can training in improv.

Actors are unique in the performing arts because they "play" two instruments simultaneously

Opera singers are like theatre actors except they need to make music too.

Body language and gesture is also important in a wide variety of musical performances. Especially since music, rhythm, dance, and body movement are all so deeply intertwined. Perhaps actors and opera singers (which would also include actors in musicals... sing, act, AND dance) might manifest these traits more obviously, but body language is important to nearly all human performance.

As a musician (not a singer), I communicate with other musicians largely via body language, but the audience is largely oblivious to it. Only another musician -- and mostly just those who have played with me -- would understand the difference between lifting my bow 1 cm or 2 cm off the strings of my violin.

This is true, there certainly are many cases where the audience is oblivious. But imagine the stereotypical rock/metal band playing. Their stance, how the strut around, how they move, how their hair moves all effect how the audience reacts to the performance.

I generally count rock stars in the category of "celebrity actors", not "musicians".

The videos at http://videolectures.net/ often pick out a momentary dramatic gesture for the thumbnail image. Out of context, they sometimes seem pretty extreme.

I pulled out a selection here: http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/tmp/vl_gestures.html (I'm the last one, I believe gesturing about orthogonal vectors during an intro to machine learning.)

One thing to be careful about, is that gesturing is something that requires cultural context.

The Western cultures see gesturing as a positive thing, but Eastern cultures (from what I've seen) seem to eschew such tendencies.

Blindly applying a "more gestures are better" kind of rule is likely to run into issues eventually.

Very true. Here in Japan I've been told my natural gestures when speaking enthusiastically are at risk of being overbearing, so I've had to learn to control them.

Very interesting how you went on to note various speakers – specifically how their speeches seemed so different sans gesticulation. Thanks for sharing. (That must have taken a lot of time!)

I hate speakers who use gestures and other gimmicks. They make feel like I'm being manipulated. Sometimes I'll close my eyes and try to focus only on what's being said. Other times I'll just leave.

Would be interesting to see scans of your notes.

Anyone notice "O' Sole Mio" in the background?

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