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Article published In:
Gesture
Vol. 19:2/3 (2020) ► pp.223–245

Out-group gestures can lower self-esteem

 | University of Alberta
 | University of Alberta
 | University of Alberta
Culture-specific symbols can prime aspects of identity, like self-esteem, in bilingual-bicultural individuals. The purpose of the present studies was to test whether gestures that are specific to a culture prime self-esteem and, if so, whether it is due to in-group/out-group association. In Study 1, Chinese Canadians had higher self-esteem scores when primed by Chinese number gestures or characters than by English number gestures or words. In Study 2, we taught Chinese number gestures to non-Chinese adults, with half thinking they were Chinese gestures (out-group) and half that they were old fur traders’ gestures (in-group). The self-esteem scores were higher in the in-group condition than the out-group condition. Comparisons with self-esteem scores from previous studies suggest that the out-group conditions were significantly lower than baseline. These results suggest that out-group gesture primes can lower self-esteem.
Keywords: conventional gestures, cultural identity, biculturalism, frame-switching
Article outline
  • Study 1
    • Methods
      • Participants
      • Materials
      • Procedure
      • Coding
      • Language of self-esteem measure
    • Results
    • Discussion of Study 1
  • Study 2
    • Methods
      • Participants
      • Materials
      • Procedure
      • Coding and comparison to previous studies’ self-esteem measures
    • Results
    • Discussion of Study 2
  • General discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 28 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.19004.nic
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