Shake on It? Careful, Your Grip Can Be Quite Revealing

I can’t tell you how often I’ve been accused of having a wimpy handshake. I’ve known this was a flaw, and I’ve yearned for a handshake with a bluff, “fine-to-meet-ya!” quality. But little did I know how much my handshake was revealing about me.

That I’m neurotic, introverted and on the conservative side. (“Neurotic? Really? Who’d have thought it?” comments an editor “friend.”)

By contrast, a work mate (let’s call her Maloy) has a firm, no-nonsense grip, which suggests that she’s extroverted, level-headed and “open to experience.”

All this we learn in this month’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

William F. Chaplin and colleagues at the University of Alabama point out that handshaking nuances have been covered in excruciating detail in etiquette books. But science has largely neglected this fertile field.

(There are exceptions--some pioneering handshake studies in the ‘30s and three papers from a Swede with some interest in the matter. But those are Swedish handshakes.)

Now Chaplin and co-workers have investigated whether handshakes are windows to the psyche by studying 112 men and women who had no idea their handshakes were being evaluated.

Each participant’s personality was assessed via a detailed questionnaire. Each participant shook hands with trained judges who knew their stuff: They’d been drilled for a month on the art of evaluating handshakes for things like dryness, grip strength and warmth.

Some additional findings:

* Men tend to have firmer handshakes than women.

* Women who are more liberal, intellectual and open to new experiences have firmer grips than those who are less open; they made a more favorable impression with the judges.

* Open, nurturing “New Men” have limper grips and made a less favorable impression.

* Handshakes tend to be consistent over time. If I was limp and clammy yesterday, chances are I’ll be limp and clammy today and limp and clammy tomorrow. Remember that if you’re ever introduced to me.

Sorry--If You Want Muscles, You’ll Have to Exercise

Wouldn’t it be great to build up muscle and tone and lose weight without having to move?

That, of course, is the promise of gadgets like the “Feminique-Portable Muscle toning device for women,” a “passive exerciser” (love the term) that uses electrical muscle stimulation to give you “a great workout” without your having to expend any effort whatsoever. (There are a kazillion other products like this.)

Now, wouldn’t you know it: Killjoys at the American Council on Exercise actually commissioned a scientific study to see if such devices work.

Electrical muscle stimulation involves strapping wires all over your body and sitting there while the machine zaps your muscles with jolts of electricity, making them contract. It’s been used to help people with injuries retain muscle mass (because muscles, if not used, waste away). But, in perfectly healthy (if lazy) bodies, can it burn calories? Tone? Increase strength and build muscle?

Not according to the council-commissioned study, conducted at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse. Not even when the “maximum tolerable level” of electricity was applied.

Sample results, seen on a cover of the council’s mag, Fitness Matters, are not pretty. The “before” picture features a young chap in black trunks, sporting a bit of a paunch. The “after” picture features the same young chap, eight weeks later, with the same black trunks and bit of paunch.

The results don’t surprise muscle expert Roger Cooke of UC San Francisco. To build muscle, he says, you have to exert a lot of energy--way more than would be possible with such zapping machines without tolerating extremely unpleasant sensations.

“People keep trying to get around this--they don’t want to work,” he says. “They want really fine bodies. They just don’t want to pay the price.”

‘Course we don’t.