Nodding Or Shaking Your Head May Even Influence Your Own Thoughts, Study Finds
COLUMBUS, Ohio – When you nod your head to signal approval or shake your head to show disapproval, it’s not just sending a message to others – you may also be influencing yourself.
A new study showed that these simple movements influenced people’s agreement with an editorial they heard while nodding or shaking their head…
“We think of nodding or shaking our head as something that communicates to other people, but it turns out that it is also communicating to ourselves,” said Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
In a sense, Petty said, nodding or shaking your head, as well as other body movements, serve as a kind of “self-validation” that confirms to us how we feel about our own thoughts.
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