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The pointing gesture has an unquestionable authority for a young child
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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For young children, gestures are the most important way of communicating with other people, so the child is ready to believe other people's gestures, even if his own experience tells him that he is being deceived.
If you want to convince a child of something, don't waste words - just point your finger. As psychologists from the University of Virginia (USA) have found out, for preschool children (three to five years old), the most indisputable argument is the "pointing finger": if a child sees such a gesture, he will agree with anything, even if it contradicts his own experience.
The researchers conducted the following experiment: forty-eight preschoolers (there were equal numbers of girls and boys) were shown a video recording of two women, four cups and a ball. One of the women said that she was going to hide one of the balls, the second turned to the wall, and the first hid the ball under one of the cups. It is important that the children also did not see where the woman hid the ball: the cups were covered with a screen, the heroine in the frame was simply doing something with the objects. Then the screen in front of the cups was removed, and the two women sat side by side again. After which the children were asked which of the women knew where the hidden ball was.
If the heroines simply sat with their hands folded on their knees, the children answered almost always correctly: they knew which woman stood with her back to the wall, and which one was hiding the ball. If the women pointed at the cups, the children also answered correctly, not paying attention to where their gazes were directed. But when the heroines pointed at one cup or another, confusion began. In one case, the "knowing" woman pointed at the cup, in the other - the "ignorant" one, and the children preferred the one who pointed. Accordingly, the proportion of correct answers fell to a statistically random value.
To make sure that the children understood what they were being asked, the researchers asked another group of children, "Which of the women hid the marble?" In this case, the answer was always correct. Apparently, even if they knew who hid the marble, the pointing gesture still convinced them that the one pointing obviously knew more and had more authority. Psychologists attribute this to the fact that in the first years of life, gestures play a huge role in children's communication with other people. Children assume that gestures correspond to reality - otherwise it would be impossible to establish contact with their help. Therefore, for children, the one who "points a finger" is the owner of genuine knowledge.