Handy emotions - Perceived emotions from floaters through hand movements in recorded video clips

Abstract: Bodily communications have been the aim for many studies mainly by focusing on the face. To communicate emotions through facial expression is known to be something we do on a regular basis, but studies regarding decoding of emotional expression of other parts of the body are scarce. This study is aimed to investigate whether participants perceive emotions from recorded hand movement and if there are differences in perception of emotional expression in hand movements dependent on stimuli presentation (i.e. individuals in a stimuli generation group underwent flotation-REST and chamber-REST). The participants of study (N=25, 10 men and 15 women M=34 years) were unaware of the previous manipulation of the recorded stimuli generation group. The results showed that participants successfully discriminated (rated) emotions such as tender and angry and that video clips of individuals undertaking flotation-REST were perceived as expressing more positive emotions through their hand movements after they have participated in a flotation session.