Ever shake someone's hand (especially a male's) and feel it was a little wimpy. If you are like me then you immediately think twice about the person. Why do they have such a light touched handshake? Are they afraid of getting in there and giving it a good squeeze? You might make up mental excuses (especially if you respect that individual). For example, you might assume they have broken their hand and hence, cannot squeeze that hard. You might fear they have OCD and they are worried about the amount of germ transfer in a good shake. Well, chances are you'd be wrong. The handshake, and grip strength in particular, is an evolutionary fitness cue to other important characteristics associated with being male. Hand grip strength is associated with circulating testosterone levels and how chicks rate you on physical attractiveness. It's also been associated with the number of sexual partners you have had (that is stronger grip, for tail!)
What's the link? Well, turns out that evolution is crafty. Evolution favors traits that help individuals reproduce and then in some cases provides the opposite sex with a bunch of cues to detect differences among individuals: say he looks more masculine he probably is stronger. And that is absolutely correct, most of the time (statistics!) So what can you do about it? Well your genetics is your genetics and that being said, sorry if you got a bum wrap! You could feign your grip strength by purposefully delivering stronger, hand crunching hand shakes. This would be the equivalent of, say, breast implants on females, but a lot less painful. That is unless your shakee has a grip to crush all grips and brakes your hand (and it would probably still be less painful).
So train up your grip best you can.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
A couple of times I have shaken someone’s hand, and its been like a limp fish! And I’ve though, is that me or him! :) I have also noticed that some people shake hands with the two hand grip, and I feel like this is a sign of attempted dominance but fails by the very fact that they feel the need to 'prove dominance'. I much prefer a nice, healthy, even handshake that says, I'm strong (and know it) and happy with the fact that I’m an alpha, and don't need to prove it!
I found this post fascinating, because I have always thought about the handshake, and wondered if it actually has any real meaning. Not only this, but in all seriousness I always get on better (in the long term) with the person that has the “Alpha, and don’t need to prove it” style handshake as weird as that sounds it almost always turns out that way.
dan,
i agree - the feel of a limp shake engenders in me a complete feeling of disrespect, like come on dude, shake my f-ing hand!
re the dominance - you are probably right. What's interesting is that while you befriend those that are Dom w/o having to prove it, who would you let be around your wife in your absence? I would always let the limp shake dude b/c I fear not his dom over my 'territory' LOL
you would now more about this than me, but I always figured that the agressive, i'm the big butch man individual is rarely the Alpha, they always tend to be the Beta...
The Alpha sits back, and lets the Beta pump up his chest, and bully the others... and only rarely shows his dominace when totally necessary. Not sure if this is the case in the animal world, but I always figured this to be the case in the human world. The real Alpha, get the Beta to do his fighting for him...
alphas v betas - in the animal kingdom sometimes it is as you describe it sometimes not. THink for example the gorilla, for which the alpha certainly asserts his dominance over all other males (& females).
In other species the alpha has an easier job and in some species the role o the alpha as being super aggressive v laid back and letting beta do his work is driven by the personality of the alpha. One thing is for sure though, if the alpha lays back, he better be able to defend his alpha-ness, because the laid back alpha will in most cases get tons competition.
in the best case scenario, the alpha's role is drive by female choice - that is if the females of the pack like show-offs, then those males tend to ascend the dominance hierarchy, however in some animals (some chimp troops and humans maybe) females prefer a more gentle male who can and will step up to defend himself and his mate if necessary.
Great question: I wish you could sit in on my evolutionary/comparative psychology class. We go over all of this and more in great detail!
Hmm...I am a woman, and if I am on the receiving end of a "bone crushing"/strong handshake from a man, the last thing I think is that he's "manly".
I just think he's a jerk, and instinctively (blame evolution!) want to run away as far as possible. So no chance of him getting this sexual partner!
Think about this carefully, gentlemen. ;)
Post a Comment