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Abstract
Verbal and nonverbal information emerge simultaneously in our everyday communication. Although people commonly use nonverbal behaviors such as facial expression and frowning to guide their impression formation, gestures' role in social communication remains little understood, especially when there is a mismatch between speech and accompanying gestures. The current study, therefore, investigates whether social dimensions could be perceived and represented through nonredundant metaphoric gestures. In two experiments, participants watched video clips and made inferences about the actors' beliefs. In Experiment 1, when the vertical gesture (upward vs. downward) was presented, more competence inferences were made than inferences from other social dimensions. In Experiment 2, the moving axis of gestures (sagittal vs. vertical) exerted a significant impact on people's perception of distinct social dimensions (warmth vs. competence) -- when verbal descriptions indicated a high valence on both warmth and competence, accompanying sagittal gestures potentiated warmth inferences and accompanying vertical gestures potentiated competence inference. The findings of both experiments suggest that social dimensions can be captured by metaphoric gestures; when target information is absent or vague in speech, people perceive and use the nonredundant information conveyed through gestural modality to assist in impression formation.