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What Does Someones Handshake Tell You About Them?

By Bob Malloney

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 03Jan2010 Word count: 639 Viewed: 973 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

What does someones handshake tell you about them? To understand this we first need to appreciate basic palm positioning.

The open palm is associated with honesty, allegiance, openness and submission. When people are being completely honest with you, they will usually expose both palms to you. When people take an oath in court they do so with the Bible in their left hand and with their right palm exposed. It's very similar to the submissive position adopted by dogs that will lie on their backs exposing their throat indicating that they give in. In humans, exposing the palms also exposes the wrist and the main arteries. Thus submission, openness.

There are three main palm positions, palm up, palm down and palm-closed-finger-pointed position.

For example, consider you are asking someone to move a box. If you do this with your palms up, you are asking them to move the box in a non-threatening manner. The person being asked to move the box will not feel threatened.

When your palm is turned down, you will be making the same request with authority. The other person will feel that they have been given an order. How that person feels now will depend on the relationship between you. Are you the other person's superior? Do you have the authority to give the order? If you haven't, they may well feel antagonistic towards you.

If you make the same request with your palm closed and with your finger pointed, you are, figuratively speaking, beating the other person into submission with a club. People will get very irritated if you wave your finger at them whilst you are speaking to them.

Let's move on and look at what this tells us about a person by the way they shake hands. Hand shaking is maybe a relic from caveman times, when people would hold their exposed palm in the air to show that they had no weapons.

It's the position of the palm and strength of the handshake that will give some clues about the other person (and, of course, of you!)

Firstly palms. Generalising, someone who shakes hands with their palms up is submissive (exposed arteries). Someone who shakes hands with their palms down is dominant. The level handshake denotes equality.

Secondly strength. The weak handshake (known as the wet fish) indicates someone who is submissive or unsure of themselves. The over-strong handshake (known as the knuckle grinder) indicates someone who is either dominant or maybe someone with emotional problems who is trying to get noticed. The straightforward firm handshake indicates someone who is comfortable with themselves.

Again, do be careful of jumping to conclusions based on body language alone. If someone gives you a wet fish handshake, well maybe they're a concert pianist and don't want to risk being damaged by a knuckle grinder!

Quite often, people are careful to shake hands in a positive way when they first meet you. They've trained themselves to do so. It's a good idea to see if they shake hands in a different way when you say goodbye. People rarely train themselves to do this positively and the 'real' person might appear.

Watch for people who shake hands with their arms thrust stiffly in front of them or people who only hold your fingers. These are people who are trying to keep you at a distance. Ask yourself, is it a lack of confidence? Why are they trying to keep you at a distance? It might take time to build up a relationship with them.

Finally on handshaking, beware of the person who uses the 'glove'. This is when someone uses both hands when they shake yours, effectively enclosing your hand in theirs. This is over-friendly. Is this true? Or are they being insincere? Politicians spring to mind!

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