This post is co-authored by Ron Riggio and nonverbal communication expert Alan Crawley. When and why do we clap? We get startled, and we clap. We try to get our dog’s (or our child’s) attention, and ...

Hand clapping is ubiquitous behavior for humans across time and cultures, serving many different purposes: to signify approval with applause, for instance, or to keep time to music. Acousticians often ...

Social contagion If you wish to avoid the social faux pas of clapping at the wrong time, listen carefully to the volume of noise around you. That's the conclusion of a study about the social dynamics ...

Applause is greatly revered as a symbol of warmth and adoration from a crowd. TV shows that film in front of a live audience often cue their audiences to clap in order to generate the desired auditory ...

Primitive though they may be, given just a simple audio recording of a single handclap, is it possible to determine the hand-configuration of the clapper via a computer-assisted digital analysis of ...