[Adrienne Arsenault] Take a moment for a little time travel back to forever ago.
March 2nd.
And German Chancellor Angela Merkel going in for a handshake.
Funny how the whole idea of not shaking hands was just so hard to get used to then.
And yet we adapt.
Even a president known for practically weaponizing the handshake
now seems horrified by an outstretched hand once routine behaviour no longer routine.
There is a tendency of some folks to use it as a demonstration of power
And so a nagging question for a specialist in organizational behaviour.
Will we ever shake on it again?
[Adrienne] What would it take for you to feel comfortable to shake a hand again?
It would take a highly effective easily available vaccine
or a super effective treatment for the coronavirus for me to be comfortable again .
So are you prepared to not shake hands for the next two years possibly?
Absolutely.
[Adrienne] This gesture has been with us for millennia.
Survived even the Black Plague.
People stopped kissing on the cheek for hundreds of years then
but they kept shaking hands.
An endearing, enduring greeting now paused.
But likely not gone because apparently we need it.
And it's a need to establish trust with one another
and the way the handshake allows you to establish trust
is by one showing that you hold nothing dangerous in your hand.
[Adrienne] But not every culture does this that's true.
Cultures that substitute replace the handshake with gestures like the namaste or the bow
emphasize different things.
Those are gestures that really speak more to respect and deference toward the other
but they don't establish their warmth
that deep sense of closeness.
[Adrienne] It's a talk we're having in the financial district of Toronto
because for the next few years without handshakes
interactions in those gleaming towers will have to change and get more personal.
And the best way to establish that you mean well is to take a real interest in the other person
with eye contact, with a smile.
With the thoughtful remembering the person when they are maybe disconnected
but you send them a note.
[Adrienne] This is a lot more work than a handshake
and before you suggest that surely videoconferencing calls are personal enough.
After all you are seeing each other -- forget it.
You can't make eye contact.
Distractions or ruinous to building a connection
and increasingly people are fed up with communicating this way.
The old-school telephone.
Now you're talking.
The phone call allows you to focus on tone, pauses, sighs.
All of those rich audio signals.
[Adrienne] So is this is this effort to keep us apart making us more personal?
In our interactions?
I don't know.
[Adrienne] She's right to hesitate.
There are too many examples of less than generous behaviour now.
Consider the angry almost panicky shaming of a woman not wearing a mask in a grocery store.
And the fury of another apparently called out.
Maybe we aren't all in this together.
There is so much fear of the other.
People talking of eye contact being avoided.
Some even holding their breath when someone walks too close.
We see each other as pariahs.
Yes.
[Adrienne] So yeah what is happening with that level of suspicion?
Yeah I mean we're not seeing people.
We're seeing like vectors of transmission you know.
And so when we're being told that touch is dangerous
what our brain thinks is people are dangerous.
Others are dangerous.
[Adrienne] For a behavioural scientist, Laura Cavanagh, a world in COVID is a classroom.
The most curious quirk, the extremes on display.
Those fully doubting it's safe to be out.
Others behaving as if it's all over.
We're under stress.
Is that we have something called decision fatigue.
Should I wear a mask or should I not wear a mask?
Does it help or does it not help?
Eventually from a psychological perspective that just wears us out.
It depletes us and people become paralyzed or anxious or depressed.
Or they become reckless, self-destructive and impulsive.
[Adrienne] Fear she maintains is pretty good at motivating short-term responses
but it doesn't motivate for long
which is possibly why medical guidelines now aren't necessarily sticking with some around the world.
And one of the first thing that goes is psychological flexibility.
And so we fall into all-or-nothing thinking or black or white thinking.
[Adrienne] The good news is most people are largely hardwired for resilience.
And the better news if we've all been denied the simple pleasures of a hug or a handshake for so long
when we eventually get them back just maybe they'll mean that much more.