Hand Gestures Boost Sales Pitches, Wharton Study Finds—With Implications for CFO Presentations

Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent his career studying persuasive communication, publishing dozens of papers and four books on how specific words in specific contexts move people to action. His latest research, published February 10, suggests that what speakers do with their hands may matter just as much as what they say.

The study, co-authored by Berger, examined how hand gestures affect audience engagement and willingness to purchase. The findings arrive at a moment when CFOs and finance leaders are increasingly expected to sell—whether pitching boards on capital allocation strategies, convincing investors during earnings calls, or persuading executive teams to fund digital transformation initiatives.

For finance executives who've traditionally relied on spreadsheets and data to make their case, the research introduces an uncomfortable variable: the physical performance of the pitch itself may influence outcomes independent of the numbers being presented.

The study builds on Berger's broader body of work examining the mechanics of persuasion. His previous research has focused primarily on linguistic choices—the specific words and phrases that trigger behavioral change. This latest paper extends that framework to nonverbal communication, a domain that's received less systematic attention in business research despite its obvious presence in every high-stakes presentation.

The timing is notable. As artificial intelligence tools increasingly handle routine financial analysis and reporting, the human elements of finance leadership—the ability to persuade, to build consensus, to communicate complex ideas to non-technical audiences—have become more valuable, not less. A CFO who can explain a complex hedging strategy is useful; one who can make the board feel confident about that strategy is indispensable.

The research doesn't specify which gestures work best or under what circumstances, leaving finance leaders to wonder whether their next investor presentation should include more hand movement or less. What's clear from Berger's findings is that the gestures themselves—whatever their specific form—demonstrably affected both engagement levels and purchase intent among study participants.

This creates an odd dynamic for an audience trained to distrust anything that smells like salesmanship. Finance professionals pride themselves on letting the numbers speak. The idea that hand movements could influence decision-making on capital deployment or M&A transactions introduces a variable that's difficult to model and impossible to audit.

The study appears in Wharton's Knowledge series, which typically bridges academic research and practical business application. For CFOs, the practical question becomes whether to incorporate these findings into presentation training—and whether doing so crosses some invisible line from "effective communication" into "manipulation."

What's certain is that the research adds another dimension to the already complex task of financial leadership in 2026, where technical expertise must now be paired with an expanding toolkit of soft skills that would have seemed tangential to the role a decade ago.