Dr Witchel added: "During these computerised quizzes, smiling was radically enhanced just after answering questions incorrectly. This behaviour could be explained by self-ratings of engagement, rather than by ratings of happiness or frustration. Materials provided by University of Sussex. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. Story Source: Materials provided by University of Sussex.
Journal Reference : Harry J. Witchel, Patrick Fagan, Harry L. Claxton, Daisy C. Holmes, Thomas T. For example, raising the eyebrows in surprise increases the field of vision, which may have helped our ancestors to escape ambushes by predators. To prove his point, Darwin improvised an experiment at his home in Downe, a sleepy village just outside of London. They unanimously agreed on happiness, fear, sadness and surprise, among others, and Darwin concluded that these expressions are universal.
Schadenfreude is often expressed as a broad, angry grin Credit: Getty Images. By analysing more than 4, photographs of athletes competing in the Athens Summer Olympic Games, they found that silver medallists who lost their final matches tended to produce these smiles — even if they had been blind from birth.
Back in 17th Century Europe, wearing your emotions openly was considered highly improper; it was an established fact that only the poor smiled with their teeth showing. In many parts of the world, this change of etiquette never happened.
The dampened smile is an attempt to control an automatic, happy one and exists because some muscles, such as the ones controlling the mouth, are easier to suppress than others. Intriguingly, this discrepancy even stretches to the way smiles are typed: vertically, with a flat mouth and squinting eyes , as opposed to dotted eyes with a curved mouth.
Another tell-tale sign is moving the head downwards and slightly to the left. It begins abruptly, raising the lower lip slightly, and is occasionally accompanied by a slightly downwards and sideways tilt of the head.
In Russia, gratuitous smiling is considered a sign of stupidity Credit: Getty Images. Another tricky expression to swallow is the rictus of utter contempt. In East Asian culture, which is less centred around the needs of the individual, negative emotions are often concealed with a smile to maintain social harmony.
For obvious reasons, this deliciously mischievous emotion is best concealed from others. The instructions are simple. If you follow the rules carefully and make good decisions, you can earn a considerable amount of money that will be paid in cash at the end of the experiment. Different participants can earn different amounts of money. What you earn today depends in part on your decisions, in part on the decisions of others and in part on luck.
It is important that you do not look to the decisions of others, you do not talk or make loud noises, and you strictly follow the task instructions. You will be advised if you violate the rules the first time. If you violate it a second time, you will be asked to leave the room and you will not receive payment. So read the rules in the instruction sheet and wait for the signal to start the game.
Before handing out the cards for the trial, the examiner additionally explained all details and steps of the game, reminding participants to avoid showing their notes to their partners throughout the game.
Participants were instructed from that moment on to avoid talking to their partners. The Face X Game is very simple. In this task two participants are matched at random, placed face-to-face, and asked to play the role of the player 1 or the observer. Two cards are distributed per pair and sit face down on the table between them. Both players are informed that the purpose of the game is to determine the extent to which the observer is capable of guessing which of the two cards has money on it i.
Any verbal communication is strictly prohibited. Recall that this is a zero-sum game. Otherwise, the player wins. It is worth noting that, in order to encourage participants to act naturally, instructions made no mention of facial expressions nor gave any indication that players might try to deceive observers. In addition, despite having already received a questionnaire, participants were told not to read it until the end of the game. No feedback is provided during this trial—that is, participants are not made aware of their performance.
All participants have complete information about the rules of the game. The player must look at the observer eye-to-eye for a few seconds before he puts the card back on the table. The same process is repeated for the second card see Supplementary Material for a more detailed description of the procedure. Note that the observer forms his or her impression of each card and reports it, after both rounds.
At the end of the second actual round i. Only one choice is allowed for the final choice. The main purposes of the initial assessments were to a force participants to form an impression based on the facial expression after each card and b keep a constant flow to the game. Observers are aware that only the final choice matters. At the end of the game, both participants are asked to fill out a questionnaire and told that only complete questionnaires will be accepted.
They are able to see the outcome of the game only after completing this final task. To ensure accuracy, the experimenter additionally double-checks the outcome of the game for each dyad.
All three studies took place in two cities. Among pairs, 30 While it is possible that culture differences exist between Brazil and the United States, care was taken to ensure that there were no noticeable dissimilarities in the materials, procedure or instruction sets. Importantly, no differences in the outcome of the game were detected between locations.
Conceptually, this task presents three unique characteristics compared to past tasks conducted in the literature. The following three studies use the Face X Game to assess the role of strategic facial emotion expression and contextual factors on dyadic interactions.
Study 1 focuses on the outcome of the game itself, study 2 examines the strategic display of facial emotion expressions, and study 3 investigates the role of contextual factors. Exact procedures used in each of the studies can be found in Supplementary Material.
One hundred sixty-four undergraduate students Prior to the beginning of the study all participants were given a consent form to read and sign pending agreement. Participants in each experimental session were randomly paired, assigned to either the role of player or observer, and instructed to play the Face X Game.
At the end of the game, all participants completed a short survey. We also gathered information about their personality traits and their affective states during the game. Following the recommendation of some statisticians, we did not correct for multiple comparisons while analyzing data, since we report all of the individual p -values Rothman, ; Saville, Statistical analyses uncovered two intriguing findings. First, out of the 82 pairs, observers only won the game 31 times. Put another way, In short, contrary to the bulk of findings in the emotion expression literature demonstrating that observers perform slightly better than chance on average Kraut, ; Vrij, ; Bond and De Paulo, , our first study shows that players were more likely to win at this non-verbal zero-sum game.
Players won more frequently when the pair was comprised of at least one female. The only condition in which observers were more frequent winners was when two men played against each another see Table 1 -study 1. TABLE 1. Frequency and percentage of winners in the Face X Game across the studies. Assuming that performance is at least somewhat related to the facial emotion expressions displayed since it is a non-verbal procedure , it is possible that individual variation in facial expressions led to the observed results.
Judging a smile as genuine is the normative judgment. A true smile denotes positive feelings or intentions Niedenthal et al. One may argue that, since this is a competitive game and not representative of a naturalistic situation, observers might simply adjust their beliefs and start guessing that smiles indicate an attempted deception.
However, as mentioned above, participants were given no indication that players would be trying to deceive observers via facial expressions. We therefore argue that observers have kept their prior belief, i. What is more, women tend to encode facial expressions of emotion better than men Fujita et al.
This could explain in part why female players had such an advantage over observers. For example, female players may have also smiled after receiving a stimulus with negative valence. Whereas observers both male and female might hold on to their contextual beliefs that smiles are the representation of a stimulus with positive valence, female players in this task were able to systematically mislead observers.
Since the lone condition where observers won more frequently Several studies indicate that men do smile less in the presence of other men LaFrance et al.
One possible explanation for this behavior is that smiling norms are more apparent when people interact with partners of the same sex.
Men smile less in the presence of other men because any expression that does not include a smile is often classified as more dominant than an expression containing a smile Keating, Consequently, male players in our study may have engaged in dominance-seeking in the presence of male observers, which caused them to smile less under these conditions. However, in the presence of female observers, it is likely that this attitude changes, causing male players to smile more compared to when they are paired with male observers.
A short survey was given at the end that sought game-related information e. None of these control variables had any impact on the outcome of the game in study 1. Therefore, it is impossible to conclusively determine whether smiles indeed varied by condition. Further, given the sample size per sex-pair, it is worth further assessing the robustness of these findings. Study 2 tackles the issues above. The purpose of study 2 is twofold.
First, it tests the robustness of the findings observed in study 1 for same-sex pairs. We focus on same-sex pairs because that is where differences in emotion expression, and particularly smiles, are most pronounced.
In an extensive meta-analysis, LaFrance et al. One hundred fifty-eight undergraduate students The procedure closely paralleled study 1. Participants were randomly paired, assigned to their roles as player or observer, and instructed to the play the Face X Game.
Study 1 and study 2 differed in two primary ways. First, in this study, only same-sex pairs were formed. For example, in Russia, people do not smile because it implies that you are at best foolish or at worst, sneaky and manipulative. Even in candid family photos, adults appear with stony, scowling faces. Although, in Japanese culture, nonverbal expressions use the eyes more than the mouth.
This makes it easier for the Japanese to determine if a smile is genuine or fake. The obicularis occuli muscle is a facial muscle that circles the eye socket. Australians and Canadians have smiling cultures and typically smile to show that they are happy or content. While they might not have the same reputation for giant white smiles as Americans, they smile more than our peers in Russia, Japan, China, Switzerland, and the UK. So, if countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia have smiling cultures and countries like China, Russia, and Japan do not, what does that tell us?
According to research quoted in the Atlantic and other publications, countries that were built and populated with many different cultures coming together smile more often and more enthusiastically than more homogenous nations.
When immigrants from many different cultures and languages come together, they often have to rely on nonverbal communication cues to make connections with their neighbors.
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