Sex Differences in Self-awareness of Smiling During a Mock Job Interview

The present study examined sex differences in awareness of smiling behavior during a job interview, along with intended outcomes of false smiling. Male and female participants were assigned to the interviewee role of a mock job interview and were videotaped. Results indicate that women were more self-aware of false, but not genuine, smiling. In addition, women reported using false smiles to mask negative emotion and to appear enthusiastic more than did men. Naïve judges rated women who smiled in an attempt to mask negative emotion more harshly than men who smiled for this reason. Implications of these findings for the understanding of sex differences in smiling are discussed.     

The nature of work and the stress of higher status

Are occupational and work conditions associated with work-to-home conflict? If so, do those associations vary by gender? Among a sample of adults in Toronto, Canada, we found that men and women in higher-status occupations reported higher levels of work-to-home conflict than workers in lower-status jobs. In addition, we observed higher levels of work-to-home conflict among workers who are self-employed and among those with more job authority, demands, involvement, and longer hours. The only significant gender-contingent effect was found for nonroutine work, which is associated positively with work-to-home conflict among men but not women. Higher levels of job demands, involvement, and hours among individuals in higher-status occupations significantly contribute to occupation-based differences in work-to-home conflict. Moreover, despite some overlap, these work conditions have largely independent associations with work-to-home conflict. Results generally support the "stress of higher status " hypothesis among both women and men. Although higher-status positions yield many rewards, such positions are not impervious to inter-role stress, and this stress may offset those rewards.     

Touch,status, and gender at professional meetings

Observers unobtrusively recorded instances of interpersonal touch at three large academic meetings (two of psychologists, one of philosophers). The names and affiliations of the individuals involved in these touches were later referred to published sources in order to develop codes reflecting the relative personal and institutional statuses of these individuals. There was mixed but on balance no overall evidence that higher-status individuals touched lower-status individuals more than vice versa. However, higher- and lower-status individuals initiated different kinds of touch. Higher-status individuals initiated touch that was judged more often to be affectionate and that was more often directed to the arm or shoulder, whereas lower-status individuals initiated more formal touches and handshakes. Gender asymmetry in touch was very weak overall, but favored male-to-female over female-to-male touch when the two individuals had equal professional status.Judee K. Burgoon served as Action Editor for this article.This research was supported by grant #RR07143 (Biomedical Research Support Grant, Department of Health and Human Services) to Northeastern University and by National Science Foundation grant # SBR-9311544. Thanks are extended to Ellen M. Veccia, who collaborated on the study design; Sabrina Herman, Treniece Lewis, Vanessa Roberts, Garry Germaine, Voravut Ratanakommon, and Alex Zelenchuk, who served as observers; and Denise Marcoux, Curtney Jacobs, Christopher O'Brien, and Alex Zelenchuk, who helped code the status indicators and prepare the touch data for analysis.     

The Development of Anticipatory Smiling

When do infants begin to communicate positive affect about physical objects to their social partners? We examined developmental changes in the timing of smiles during episodes of initiating joint attention that involved an infant gazing between an object and a social partner. Twenty‐six typically developing infants were observed at 8, 10, and 12 months during the Early Social‐Communication Scales, a semistructured assessment for eliciting initiating joint attention and related behaviors. The proportion of infant smiling during initiating joint attention episodes did not change with age, but there was a change in the timing of the smiles. The likelihood of infants smiling at an object and then gazing at the experimenter while smiling (anticipatory smiling) increased between 8 and 10 months and remained stable between 10 and 12 months. The increase in the number of infants who smiled at an object and then made eye contact suggests a developing ability to communicate positive affect about an object.     

Looking,smiling, laughing,and moving in restaurants: Sex and age differences

Three hundred and twenty-eight diners in three restaurants were observed for three minutes each and the frequencies of six behaviors recorded: looking and glancing away from the table and companions, smiling, laughing, gross movements, and standing. Males looked more than females, and females smiled and laughed more than males. Significant age differences were found for smiling, laughing, movement, and standing. Significant interactions were found in looking for sex by with or without a companion. Significant age by sex interactions were found for smiling, laughing, and standing.     

Status Roles and Recall of Nonverbal Cues

In two experiments, interpersonal status was experimentally manipulated by assigning one dyad member to be the owner of a mock art gallery and the other to be the owner's assistant. Without forewarning, participants were asked immediately following the interaction to recall their partner's hand gestures, self-touch, gazing, smiling, and nodding. Accuracy of recall was determined by comparing these ratings to their partners' behavior as coded from the videotape. In both experiments, assistants were more accurate at recalling the amount of owners' self-touch than vice versa, but there was little evidence of an accuracy difference in recall of the other nonverbal cues. When accuracy was defined as the correlation between a participant's ratings of the partner's behaviors and the partner's actual behaviors, there was evidence that assistants were more accurate than owners when a combined p-value was calculated across both studies.     

Interruptions and nonverbal gender differences

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in selected nonverbal behaviors associated with interruptions. Six graduate student groups involving 18 female and 17 male subjects were videotaped. The data for the study were 140 cross-sex interruption sequences and a matched, randomly selected sample of noninterruption sequences. A category system using self-related activity, gestures, body lean, facial expression and eye gaze was developed and used to code the data. There were no significant findings related to interruptions in the categories of self-related activity or gestures. Women leaned away from the group significantly more often than did men and when leaning away, women were more likely to be interrupted. Women were also more likely to be interrupted when smiling than were men, and women smiled significantly more when taking the speaking turn. Finally, women were interrupted significantly more often than men when they did not look at the turn-taker. The high educational status of the subjects was examined in the discussion of the findings.     

The Mystery of the European Smile: A Comparison Based on Individual Photographs Provided by Internet Users

The aim of the study was to analyze cross-cultural differences in preference for smiling among the users of one of the most popular instant messaging sites called Windows Live Messenger in terms of facial expression (smiling vs. non-smiling) on the photographs accompanying their profiles. 2,000 photos from 10 countries were rated by two independent judges. Despite the fact that 20 years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Internet users from a former Soviet bloc appear to smile less often than those from Western Europe. Also, replicating past research, women irrespective of their nationality smiled more than men.     

Large-Scale Observational Evidence of Cross-Cultural Differences in Facial Behavior

Self-report studies have found evidence that cultures differ in the display rules they have for facial expressions (i.e., for what is appropriate for different people at different times). However, observational studies of actual patterns of facial behavior have been rare and typically limited to the analysis of dozens of participants from two or three regions. We present the first large-scale evidence of cultural differences in observed facial behavior, including 740,984 participants from 12 countries around the world. We used an Internet-based framework to collect video data of participants in two different settings: in their homes and in market research facilities. Using computer vision algorithms designed for this dataset, we measured smiling and brow furrowing expressions as participants watched television ads. Our results reveal novel findings and provide empirical evidence to support theories about cultural and gender differences in display rules. Participants from more individualist cultures displayed more brow furrowing overall, whereas smiling depended on both culture and setting. Specifically, participants from more individualist countries were more expressive in the facility setting, while participants from more collectivist countries were more expressive in the home setting. Female participants displayed more smiling and less brow furrowing than male participants overall, with the latter difference being more pronounced in more individualist countries. This is the first study to leverage advances in computer science to enable large-scale observational research that would not have been possible using traditional methods.     

Effects of Social Anxiety on Emotional Mimicry and Contagion: Feeling Negative,but Smiling Politely

Socially anxiety may be related to a different pattern of facial mimicry and contagion of others’ emotions. We report two studies in which participants with different levels of social anxiety reacted to others’ emotional displays, either shown on a computer screen (Study 1) or in an actual social interaction (Study 2). Study 1 examined facial mimicry and emotional contagion in response to displays of happiness, anger, fear, and contempt. Participants mimicked negative and positive emotions to some extent, but we found no relation between mimicry and the social anxiety level of the participants. Furthermore, socially anxious individuals were more prone to experience negative emotions and felt more irritated in response to negative emotion displays. In Study 2, we found that social anxiety was related to enhanced mimicry of smiling, but this was only the case for polite smiles and not for enjoyment smiles. These results suggest that socially anxious individuals tend to catch negative emotions from others, but suppress their expression by mimicking positive displays. This may be explained by the tendency of socially anxious individuals to avoid conflict or rejection.     

Status and Career Decision: An Analysis of the Time Dimension*

This paper reports on a study which examined the input parental status has on the timing of career decision. Data for this study were collected by means of questionnaire from graduating seniors from 24 colleges and universities. It was hypothesized that students from upper-status parents would choose their future career later in their life than would students with lower-status parents. Although the data tend to support the hypothesis, it seems to hold more true for females than for males. This difference was attributed to the varying emphasis placed upon the responsibility for the achievement of success.     

Effects of Gambling-Related Cues on the Activation of Implicit and Explicit Gambling Outcome Expectancies in Regular Gamblers

The current research examined whether the presentation of gambling-related cues facilitates the activation of gambling outcome expectancies using both reaction time (RT) and self-report modes of assessment. Gambling outcome expectancies were assessed by having regular casino or online gamblers (N = 58) complete an outcome expectancy RT task, as well as a self-report measure of gambling outcome expectancies, both before and after exposure to one of two randomly assigned cue conditions (i.e., casino or control video). Consistent with hypotheses, participants exposed to gambling-related cues (i.e., casino cue video condition) responded faster to positive outcome expectancy words preceded by gambling prime relative to non-gambling prime pictures on the post-cue RT task. Similarly, participants in the casino cue video condition self-reported significantly stronger positive gambling outcome expectancies than those in the control cue video condition following cue exposure. Activation of negative gambling outcome expectancies was not observed on either the RT task or self-report measure. The results indicate that exposure to gambling cues activates both implicit and explicit positive gambling outcome expectancies among regular gamblers.     

The Duchenne Smile and Persuasion

We investigated persuasiveness as a social outcome of the ability to produce a deliberate Duchenne smile in a role-play task and of a participant’s use of a Duchenne smile while persuading someone in a live interaction. Participants were tasked with persuading an experimenter to drink a pleasant and unpleasant tasting juice as well as not drink a pleasant and unpleasant juice while being videotaped. Participants’ deliberate Duchenne smiling ability was measured by asking participants to smile while acting out “genuine happiness” and also to mask imagined negative affect with a smile. Smiles in the deliberate Duchenne smiling task and the persuasion task were coded for presence of the Duchenne marker, and naïve viewers of the persuasion task made ratings of how pleasant they thought the juice was. Results showed further evidence that a sizeable minority of people can deliberately produce a Duchenne smile and showed that those with this ability are more persuasive. When persuading to drink the pleasant tasting juice, the correlation between the ability to produce a deliberate Duchenne smile and persuasion was partially due to the use of the Duchenne smile while persuading, but this was not the case with the unpleasant tasting juice. When persuading to drink the unpleasant juice, participants who could deliberately put on the Duchenne smile were more persuasive but their persuasiveness was not the result of using a Duchenne smile during the persuasion task.     

Fear Attenuated and Affection Augmented: Male Self-Presentation in a Romantic Context

We investigated whether males use facial behavior strategically in order to increase their desirability as romantic partners. Participants were led to believe that a female research assistant who was either attractive or unattractive was observing them. Their task was to watch three short films: an excerpt from a horror film, a video of infants, and a neutral film. Males who thought they were being observed by the attractive assistant frowned less (AU4) while watching the horror film and smiled more (AU12, with and without AU6) while watching the infant film. Assistant attractiveness did not affect males’ facial behavior while they were watching the neutral film.     

Surviving Involuntary Unemployment Together: The Role of Resilience-Promoting Communication in Familial and Committed Relationships

Involuntary unemployment is an unfortunate circumstance not only for those without meaningful work, but also for families, family relationships, and committed long-term relationships. To explore the role that communication plays in helping family partners demonstrate resilience (i.e., competence and adaptation throughout the experience of a stressor), while dealing with involuntary unemployment, the current study surveyed a sample of 111 recently unemployed, relationally involved participants. The majority of these participants self-reported as married (40.6%) or indicated serious commitment (38.6%) with their relational partner. Communication strategies perceived as contributing to resilience with their partner were measured as Resilience-Promoting Communication (RPC). Bootstrapping mediation analysis determined that RPC dimensions emphasizing respect/harmony, partnership and tension release contributed to mediation of the relationship between feelings about job loss on relational satisfaction and commitment. In addition, respect/harmony moderated the relationship between both unemployment affect and commitment and satisfaction. Civility moderated the relationship between unemployment affect and satisfaction. Implications of these findings for theory and for families dealing with unemployment are discussed.     

Sexual Behaviors of Hispanic Emerging Adults: Examining the Immigrant Paradox

The current study examined the immigrant paradox regarding risky sexual behaviors of Hispanic emerging adults from a social learning perspective, theorizing that the immigrant paradox could partially be explained by the sexual lyrical content contained in music. Participants included 173 Hispanic emerging adults from South America, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central America, and Mexico. The current study examined sexual lyrical content along with gender, generational status, family structure, economic hardship, and religiosity. Participant gender was associated with age at first date, with male participants engaging in unsupervised dating activities earlier than female participants, and number of dating partners, with female participants reporting more dating partners than male participants. Results from hierarchical regression analyses indicated that sexual lyrical content in music could partially explain the immigrant paradox regarding risky sexual behaviors of Hispanic emerging adults.     

Negotiating Clothing Identities on the Sales Floor

How do salespeople negotiate “clothing identities” with customers? To answer this question, I conducted fieldwork in the women's departments of several luxury goods stores in Paris that sell ready-to-wear clothes. In this negotiating context of personalized service, lower-status individuals (salespersons) propose new identities to higher-status consumers. This comparison of how saleswomen and gay salesmen negotiate clothing identities with women customers examines both their identification with the customers and the role-playing involved. The sales area as a “backstage” permits the “expertise” of the sales staff to mitigate the status differences and gives gay male sales staff latitude in their interactions with female clients. Through a construction of clothing identity from articles from the store, saleswomen present an image of possibilities to customers. Playing the role of personal audience, gay salesmen use their ambiguous gender identity to sell clothing.     

How the Experience of Emotion is Modulated by Facial Feedback

The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial actions modulate subjective experiences of emotion. Using the voluntary facial action technique, in which the participants react with instruction induced smiles and frowns when exposed to positive and negative emotional pictures and then rate the pleasantness of these stimuli, four questions were addressed in the present study. The results in Experiment 1 demonstrated a feedback effect because participants experienced the stimuli as more pleasant during smiling as compared to when frowning. However, this effect was present only during the critical actions of smiling and frowning, with no remaining effects after 5 min or after 1 day. In Experiment 2, feedback effects were found only when the facial action (smile/frown) was incongruent with the presented emotion (positive/negative), demonstrating attenuating but not enhancing modulation. Finally, no difference in the intensity of produced feedback effect was found between smiling and frowning, and no difference in feedback effect was found between positive and negative emotions. In conclusion, facial feedback appears to occur mainly during actual facial actions, and primarily attenuate ongoing emotional states.     

It does (not) get better: Reference income violation and altruism

We experimentally test whether the gap between reference and actual income impacts subsequent altruism. Participants first perform a real-effort task for a fixed wage and then play a dictator game. Between conditions, we vary the level and the timing of the revelation of the wage. In some conditions, participants know the wage before the real effort task and are not informed of the other potential levels. In some other conditions, they are informed of the distribution of wages before the real effort task, but the actual wage is only revealed afterward. Participants in the latter conditions can form references that may be higher or lower than their actual wage. Our hypothesis is that the gap between the reference and the actual wage impacts transfers in the subsequent dictator game, either because participants want to compensate their recent losses, or because of the emotional reaction to gains and losses. The results support this hypothesis: participants who get the low wage transfer less and are less likely to transfer when they are informed of the other potential levels than when they are not. Conversely, participants who get the high wage are more likely to transfer positive amounts when they are informed of the other potential levels. We use physiological (skin conductance response) and declarative data to discuss the role of emotions in our treatment effects.