Pointing gesture for a small child has an indisputable authority
Last reviewed: 20.11.2021
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For young children, gesticulation is 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 indicates that he is deceived.
If you want to convince a child of something, do not waste words - just point your finger. As psychologists from the University of Virginia (USA) found out, for children of preschool age (from three to five) 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.
Researchers put the following experiment: forty-eight preschoolers (girls and boys were equally divided) showed a video recording with 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 one put the ball under one of the cups. It is important that the children also did not see where the woman hides the ball: the cups were closed with a screen, the heroine in the frame just did something with objects. Then the screen in front of the cups was removed, and the two women again sat next to each other. After that, the children were asked which of the women knows where the hidden ball is.
If the heroines simply sat with folded hands on their knees, the children answered almost always correctly: they knew what kind of woman stood, turned to the wall, and which - she hid the ball. If women showed a glance at the cups, the children also answered correctly, not paying attention to where the views were directed. But then, when the heroines pointed a finger at this or that cup, a mess began. In one case, a "knowing" woman pointed to the cup, in the other - "unaware", and the children preferred the one that showed with a finger. Accordingly, the proportion of correct answers fell to a statistically random value.
To make sure that the children understand what they are asking for, the researchers asked another group of children the question: "Which of the women hid the ball?" In this case, the answer was always correct. Obviously, even if they knew who was hiding the ball, the gesturing gesture still persuaded them that the one who points with a finger knows definitely more and has more authority. Psychologists attribute this to the fact that in the first years of life, gesticulation plays a colossal role in communicating children with other people. Children proceed from the fact that gestures correspond to reality - otherwise, with their help it would be impossible to establish contact. Therefore, for children, the one who "shows a finger," and there is a possessor of true knowledge.