Topic 115: Personality in the Handshake

Carol:

You Can Shake On It 

Frankly, I am at a loss for words. Yep, I don’t think much about handshakes although my husband has been reminding me lately that handshaking is a way to spread winter colds and other germs. I think handshakes are kind of a guy thing.  And maybe a kid thing, too. Oh, and definitely a cowboy thing.
 

I say a “guy thing” because most of the handshakes I ‘ve seen that have any  personality have come from men. I saw two guys do a “high-five” kind of fist bump on a reality show last night, a show that is so shamelessly trashy that I don’t want to admit I watched it, but there was the redemption of seeing that fist bump, which came after several hours of drinking in a Texas bar. Earlier in the evening I had watched a few minutes of a Suns basketball game where all kinds of hand-shaking, hand-slapping gyrations accompany the traditional show of good sportsmanship at the end of the game. Once the drinking and the sports is over, the 21st century business world apparently still considers an assertive (but not aggressive) handshake as the way for a man to make a good impression. Women not so much.
 

Well, the kid thing is all about learning some of the etiquette—shaking hands after a soccer game or meeting an adult for the first time—but it’s also about having fun, especially with the little ones. When our kids were little, they knew right after they started walking what to do when Mom or Dad called out “Gimme 5.” And the current batch of family toddlers have their own greeting rituals and variations of high, low, fist, knuckle, slap, elbow greetings, guaranteed to escalate into either silliness or violence. 
 

The cowboy thing I’ve observed from living in ranch country, or the remnants thereof. Our introduction to cowboy culture came in the mid 1980’s through visits to the Bonhams’ Skull Valley,  50-acre Juniper Well Ranch,  which had once been a part of the larger Bar-U-Bar Ranch.  Despite having been raised in southern California, Dave Bonham not only looked like a weather-worn, range-bred cowboy, but he took to the lifestyle and fit right in with the local ranchers. Dave told us about “kickin’dirt,” the kind of stand-around, look at the ground, low-key, slow-key way the cowboys shared information, conducted business, etc.  The cowboys I met at Bonham barbecues were about the politest folks I ever met, with a clear etiquette of hat-tipping and hand-shaking, whether it was the 20-something cowboy cum artist or a much older Fred Patton, who had run the neighboring Bud Webb ranch for years (source: Edith Ballew Patton, Sharlot Hall Museum).  You wouldn’t see any fist bumps or high-fives from these guys after cow-branding or fence-riding.
 

The arbiter of cowboy etiquette seems to be Texas Bix Bender, whose quotes show up on websites for Ford Trucks, western gear shops, and Alberta guest ranches. You can find most of his humor books online, but not a lot about him. Turns out Texas Bix Bender is the pseudonym for Steve Arwood, a Texas humorist who worked in radio. According Bender/Arwood,    

 Nowadays, a lot of folks greet you with a question: "What's up?" "How ya doin'?" or "How's it goin'?" The proper cowboy greeting comes from an awareness of where the sun is in the sky and consists of the word "Mornin'," "Afternoon," or "Evenin'. (source: Fordtruckfanatics.com)

I promised my daughter I would finish this essay before I head out for a busy day. We didn’t exactly shake on it, but in Yavapai County we keep our word (s).

       
Sources:
Juniper Well Ranch homepage. http://www.juniperwellranch.com/home.htm
Patton, Edith Ballew.” More Memories of Old Skull Valley.” http://sharlot.org/archives/history/dayspast/text/2009_04_11.shtml
Texas Bix Bender quoted on Ford Truck Fanatics website. http://www.fordtruckfanatics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10064

Megan:

Personality in the Handshake

Well, as you know I am looking for a job. To aid the search, I subscribe to a number of listservs, twitterfeeds and other advice-giving informational resources about how to build good resumes, what not to do at interviews, and how to market yourself online. Just a minute ago, I purchased a domain name for my portfolio website. This was an impulsive decision and quite possibly a mistake because now I can’t figure out how to connect my existing website with the new name. Luckily, I am spending next weekend with my computer genius cousins and maybe they’ll be able to help me out. Otherwise, I just blew $20 of my mother’s hard earned retirement. On the bright side, no one else is going to be able to use meganchammond.com for the next 2 years.

The reason I brought that up is that I wasn’t sure what I could say about this topic. Maybe back in 1915 it was a novel thought (although probably not – people have been shaking hands for hundreds of years), but now the idea of personality in a handshake seems like a masculine cliché.  So I Googled handshake personality and whaddayaknow! A whole bunch of job search/ recruiter advice columns popped up. (I wonder how many otherwise qualified candidates blow their chances with a limp wrist and sweaty palms. ) I’ve never given much thought about shaking hands and what my handshake says about me. I only ever notice others’ when their hands are so flaccid I can’t even feel their bones. Apparently this is known as the "Dead Fish" and indicates a passive and reserved personality. 

(As opposed to the "Live Fish" handshake -- too wriggly to keep ahold of -- indicates flightiness and undependability.)
 

Ok,  I know body language is an important part of face-to-face communication. I’ve taken training courses in dealing with difficult customers through library management trainers and also within the prison. I can tell when a fight is about to break out, or if someone is feeling intimidated, but I’m not sure I subscribe to all that psychological stuff about handshakes. Same with handwriting analysis. I can mimic any handwriting I see, and my own style changes depending on my mood and my pen, so how can anyone interpret the whole story based on a couple handwritten lines? I designed my signature when I first moved to England and needed to use traveller’s cheques and realized that how I signed my name was part of my identification. I don’t think it says anything about me.  So maybe this is all nonsense.
 
And then I found an article on WebMD, which I always supposed to be a reputable online source of medical information. And here they are posting an article with about as much scientific veracity as astrology. I thought. (Before I read it. Cuz I like to jump to conclusions. Especially  wrong ones.) Anyway, apparently there was a study. Men and women (gender was a factor in the results) filled out a few personality questionnaires, and shook hands with the researchers, who didn’t tell them that the handshake was part of the test. You can read the article yourself, but one point the article makes is that a firm handshake in a woman is a good way  to promote herself without seeming “too forward”.  From this, we can gather that other forms of assertiveness in a woman can make her seem “pushy.” Presumably, a pushy woman is intimidating to a man, who may attempt to assert his own dominance by engulfing her entire hand – but don’t worry, WebMD has tips on how to avoid that too.  

Please excuse me now, while I attempt to practice the proper degree of feminine assertiveness.

10 Types of handshakes: http://blog.sironaconsulting.com/sironasays/2007/10/the-top-10-hand.html
WebMD! http://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20000807/handshake-is-worth-thousand-words