Men and Women Holding Hands Revisited: Effects of Mutual Engagement and Hand Dominance on Attributions of Cross-Sex Handholding

In line with the social meaning orientation to nonverbal behavior, the current study conceptualized handholding as a multidimensional nonverbal cue with the potential to signal relational meaning to outside observers. Results support the hypotheses that individuals attribute varied levels of intimacy to a cross-sex couple based on the mutual engagement of handholding type and the distance between elbows. In addition, the results corroborate observational studies claiming that hand dominance serves to signal relational power distribution. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for our knowledge of handholding as a form of nonverbal communication as well as their implications for the broader theoretical question of how relational meaning is signaled by nonverbal behavior.