One can handle the truth: Nonverbal sign of honesty influence the level of obedience

Many research address the issue of complying to requests given by strangers. People are more willing to conform to requests of the ones they trust or from the ones they judge to be honest. Sender’s gestures and nonverbal behavior might suggest an honest intention behind the request, which should lead to higher rate of obedience. In three natural experiments we investigated whether nonverbal sign of honesty (hand over heart gesture) would increase senders’ honesty ratings and the compliance rate. We measured compliance towards the request as well as the declared (Study 1 & 2) and actual (Study 3) level of engagement participants performed, along with the ratings of sender’s honesty (Study 2 & 3). The results suggest that, the request accompanying a nonverbal emblematic hand movement of hand over heart (in comparison to several control gestures) increases the percentage of people acting in accordance with it. Results are discussed according to dual processing theory. peerReviewed publishedVersion