Word: fingering
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...Making the middle-finger gesture brings hostile thoughts to mind," says Chandler. "In our studies, participants were not even aware that their finger movements resembled 'the finger,' and they nevertheless perceived an unrelated other as a more hostile person...
...When the reading was done, the researchers asked the students to describe their own moods and, significantly, their feelings about Donald. In general, those who had extended the middle finger while reading were less happy than the ones who had held out the index finger. What's more, they were also likelier not to care very much for Donald - or at least to describe him as a hostile person...
...thumbs-up gesture worked just the other way. When the researchers repeated the experiment, this time with 74 other students who were asked to raise either the thumb or the index finger, Donald's good-conduct marks went way up. Those results, however, were not uniform across the entire group. Women were much more positively affected by raising their thumbs than men were - a difference that did not emerge in the middle finger study. This was not entirely surprising to the researchers...
...there any lesson from this work beyond, you know, next time you see Donald try not to give him the finger? Chandler believes there is. Most of the time we flip someone off, he points out, we do so secretly, in the privacy of the car or after the person has walked away - a good idea if we want to avoid getting slugged. But that doesn't mean no one gets hurt...
...Even when nobody sees the gesture, it may have an adverse effect," Chandler says, "leaving us more convinced that other people are nasty and hostile. This may lead to additional hostile acts down the road." If today's finger can indeed be tomorrow's fistfight, the best bet might simply be to keep our hands in our pockets...