Please don't! The automatic extrapolation of dangerous intentions.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Facial emotions and body postures are key in social communication.
• Gaze directs attention in faces, but hand-based attention cues are less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate if emotional hand features orient attention.
• Examine how implied motion and hand pose interact with automatic hand coding.

Main Methods:

• Used static hand photographs with implied motion.
• Compared neutral and emotionally threatening hand poses in a Sidedness task.
• Analyzed reaction times and subjective valence/arousal ratings.

Main Results:

• A Sidedness effect was observed for both neutral and emotional hands.
• Emotional hands showed faster reaction times for palm views than back views.
• Palm views of threatening hands increased arousal and decreased valence.

Conclusions:

• Hands convey emotional information that orients attention.
• The "offensive" palm pose may increase threat perception and arousal.
• Emotional coding of hands is influenced by pose and potential threat.