If you're looking for a new job, here's a tip: have a firm handshake.
In a new study, scientists put 98 students through mock job interviews with businesspeople. The students also met with trained handshake raters who, unbeknownst to the students, rated their grips. Separately, the businesspeople graded each student's overall performance and hireability. The two group's scores were then compared.
Students who got high handshake marks were also rated most hireable.
"We've always heard that interviewers make up their mind about a person in the first two or three minutes of an interview, no matter how long the interview lasts," said study leader Greg Stewart, associate professor of management and organizations at the University of Iowa. "We found that the first impression begins with a handshake that sets the tone for the rest of the interview."
Link - Thanks Geekazoid!
In a few seconds, people can make a judgement of new teachers that is the same one they make after the end of the semester. With a brief, audio-less videoclip of a person's face, viewers guess-- more than chance-- whether the person is gay or straight. And these Trained Professional Handshake Raters will see if these people are going to have a good interview, and even though, consciously, they rely on their training and its quantitative measures, they're bound to be influenced by their meeting.
And anyways, interviewers look for a good firm handshake ANYWAYS as a way of judging character. People who prepare for their interviews know this and are prepared to give a good handshake. I know that this study only looks at hireability anyways, but if you wanna look at fitness for the job, a handshake tells you nothing. Likewise, some interviewers who believe in mystical-magical color psychology will look favorably on people with red ties, just because they read somewhere that red means confident, and the well-prepared interviewee will take advantage of this.
Studies like this usually have several participants who, for whatever reason, have data that is unusable, or otherwise cause their results to be discounted. It could be, for example, that the students showed up for the handshake analysis, but couldn't make it to the job interviews and so, they were not counted in the data.