Abstract
We examined the effects of the temporal quality of smile displays on impressions and decisions made in a simulated job interview. We also investigated whether similar judgments were made in response to synthetic (Study 1) and human facial stimuli (Study 2). Participants viewed short video excerpts of female interviewees exhibiting dynamic authentic smiles, dynamic fake smiles, or neutral expressions, and rated them with respect to a number of attributes. In both studies, perceivers’ judgments and employment decisions were significantly shaped by the temporal quality of smiles, with dynamic authentic smiles generally leading to more favorable job, person, and expression ratings than dynamic fake smiles or neutral expressions. Furthermore, authentically smiling interviewees were judged to be more suitable and were more likely to be short-listed and selected for the job. The findings show a high degree of correspondence in the effects created by synthetic and human facial stimuli, suggesting that temporal features of smiles similarly influence perceivers’ judgments and decisions across the two types of stimulus.
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Notes
In the context of this paper, the temporal form or quality of smiles refers to the dynamic or moving aspect of facial expressions and is operationalized in terms of its onset, apex, and offset duration.
Clearly, the Duchenne marker as a morphological feature is a perceptible signal in social interaction separate from the effect of temporal features. However, we argue that temporal dynamics may themselves be sufficient to shape perceptions and strategic decisions independent of this morphological marker (see Krumhuber et al. 2007a for a similar approach).
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The authors would like to thank the three human posers who participated in this research, Geoff Thomas and two anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of this paper.
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Krumhuber, E., Manstead, A.S.R., Cosker, D. et al. Effects of Dynamic Attributes of Smiles in Human and Synthetic Faces: A Simulated Job Interview Setting. J Nonverbal Behav 33, 1–15 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-008-0056-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-008-0056-8