Seeing is believing: Facial appearance,credibility, and attitude change

One-hundred twenty-eight subjects (64 female, 64 male) viewed either a babyfaced or maturefaced female speaker delivering a persuasive communication, and also received information designed to make the speaker seem either untrustworthy or inexpert. Subjects indicated how much they agreed with the speaker's position and completed other measures concerning her appearance and their perceptions of her speech. Babyfaced speakers induced more agreement with their position than did maturefaced speakers when trustworthiness was in question, presumably because babyfaced speakers still appeared honest due to their babyish facial features. Conversely, maturefaced speakers produced more attitude agreement as compared to babyfaced speakers when expertise was questioned, perhaps because knowledgeability was still communicated via their mature countenance. Attitude change was not related to perceived likability, age, attractiveness, or communication skills of the speakers, or subjects' interest in the topic.Over 80 million people watched at least one of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon television debates. Those who listened to them on the radio tended to think Richard Nixon had outdone the youthful, inexperienced JFK. The Republican's words carried more weight. Those who watched on television, however, proclaimed Kennedy the winner. His words were less important than his warmth [and] his sincerity. ... all of these qualities came across on television.—Krauss, in Davis & Baran (1981, pp. 103–104)     

The Effects of Social Interaction and Personal Relationships on Facial Expressions

Previous studies have reported that the expression of smiles is facilitated by social interaction between partners. We examined the effects of social interaction and personal relationships on facial expressions in Japan. Pairs of friends and strangers seated next to each other (the no partition condition) or separated by a partition (the partition condition) were shown film clips aimed to elicit either positive or negative affect. Smiles were facilitated in the no partition condition in which participants interacted with each other. Further, the effect of social interaction on frowns differed depending on whether pairs were friends or strangers.     

Moderating Effects of Facial Expression and Movement on the Babyface Stereotype

We investigated whether the well-documented babyface stereotype is moderated by facial movement or expression. Impressions of more babyfaced women as warmer and less dominant were weaker when faces were moving than when they were static. These moderating effects of facial movement were consistent with its tendency to reduce the perceived anger of low babyfaced women. Impressions of more babyfaced women as less dominant were equally strong whether faces showed a neutral or surprised expression, but impressions of them as warmer were significant only for neutral expressions. The moderating effect of facial expression on impressions of warmth was consistent with the tendency for surprise expressions to attenuate differences in the perceived babyfaceness of high and low babyfaced people. Theoretical interpretations and practical implications are discussed.     

Moving Faces: Categorization of Dynamic Facial Expressions in American Sign Language by Deaf and Hearing Participants

American Sign Language (ASL) uses the face to express grammar and inflection, in addition to emotion. Research in this area has mostly used photographic stimuli. The purpose of this paper is to present data on how deaf signers and hearing non-signers recognize and categorize a variety of communicative facial expressions in ASL using dynamic stimuli rather than static pictures. Stimuli included six expression types chosen because they share overt similarities but express different content. Hearing participants were more accurate in their categorizations but expressed overall lower confidence regarding their performance.

Effects of Social Anxiety on Nonverbal Accuracy and Response Time I: Facial Expressions

Cognitive models of social anxiety provide a basis for predicting that the ability to process nonverbal information accurately and quickly should be impaired during the experience of state anxiety. To test this hypothesis, we assigned participants to threatening and non-threatening conditions and asked them to label the emotions expressed in a series of faces. It was predicted that social anxiety would be positively associated with errors and response times in threatening conditions, but not in a non-threatening condition. It was also predicted that high social anxiety would be associated with more errors and longer response times when identifying similar expressions such as sadness, anger, and fear. The results indicate that social anxiety was not associated with errors in identifying facial expressions of emotion, regardless of the level of state anxiety experienced. However, social anxiety scores were found to be significantly related to response times to identify facial expressions, but the relationship varied depending on the level of state anxiety experienced. Methodological and theoretical implications of using response time data when assessing nonverbal ability are discussed.     

Aging and the Effects of Facial and Prosodic Cues on Emotional Intensity Ratings and Memory Reconstructions

Young (M = 23 years) and older (M = 77 years) adults' interpretation and memory for the emotional content of spoken discourse was examined in an experiment using short, videotaped scenes of two young actresses talking to each other about emotionally-laden events. Emotional nonverbal information (prosody or facial expressions) was conveyed at the end of each scene at low, medium, and high intensities. Nonverbal information indicating anger, happiness, or fear, conflicted with the verbal information. Older adults' ability to differentiate levels of emotional intensity was not as strong (for happiness and anger) compared to younger adults. An incidental memory task revealed that older adults, more often than younger adults, reconstruct what people state verbally to coincide with the meaning of the nonverbal content, if the nonverbal content is conveyed through facial expressions. A second experiment with older participants showed that the high level of memory reconstructions favoring the nonverbal interpretation was maintained when the ages of the participants and actresses were matched, and when the nonverbal content was conveyed both through prosody and facial expressions.     

Effects of Social Context on Deliberate Facial Expressions: Evidence from a Stroop-like Task

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Facial expressions contribute to nonverbal communication, social coordination, and interaction. Facial expressions may reflect the emotional state of the expressor,...     

我国中小企业管理创新基本问题探析

随着我国市场化程度的不断提高，中小企业不仅是扩大就业机会，增加财政收入，繁荣市场的短期政策选择，也是建立健全社会主义市场经济体制，实现国民经济可持续发展的长期需要。但由于中小企业本身的特点，它们在与大企业的市场竞争中常常处于不利地位，效益比大企业明显要低。加之我国市场化程度的提高和加入WTO后新的市场环境，     

The Effect of Learning Experiences and Context on Infant Imitation and Generalization

Over the first years of life, infants gradually develop the ability to retrieve their memories across cue and contextual changes. Whereas maturational factors drive some of these developments in memory ability, experiences occurring within the learning event may also impact infants' ability to retrieve memories in new situations. In 2 experiments we examined whether it was possible to facilitate 12‐month‐old infants' generalization of learning in the deferred imitation paradigm by varying experiences before or during the demonstration session, or during the retention interval. In Experiment 1, altering the length, timing, or variability of training had no impact on generalization; infants showed a low, but consistent level of memory retrieval. In Experiment 2, infants who experienced a unique context for encoding and retrieval exhibited generalization; infants who experienced the context prior to the demonstration session, or during the retention interval, did not. Specificity is a robust feature of infant memory and is not substantially altered by encoding experiences in an observational learning paradigm. Previous history with a learning environment can, however, impact the flexibility of memory retrieval.     

The Effects of the Facial Expression of Beneficiaries in Charity Appeals and Psychological Involvement on Donation Intentions

To increase the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns, many human‐need charities include pictures of beneficiaries in their ads. However, it is unclear when and why the facial expression of these beneficiaries (sad versus happy) may influence the effectiveness of charity ads. To answer these questions, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of the facial expression on donation intentions, while considering the moderating role of psychological involvement with charities. It found that psychological involvement with charities moderated the impact of the facial expression on donation intentions in that seeing a picture of a sad versus happy person increased intentions to give among participants with lower levels of psychological involvement, whereas the reverse was true for highly involved participants. The moderating effect of psychological involvement was fully explained by the perceived efficacy of one's donation. The findings not only contribute to our understanding of the effect of the facial expression of people pictured in charity appeals on donation behavior, but also suggest that nonprofits should tailor their ads to target potential donors with various levels of psychological involvement with charities.     

The Effects of Contingent Caregiver Imitation of Infant Vocalizations: a Comparison of Multiple Caregivers

The present study replicated and extended the Pelaez et al. (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 44:33–40, 2011) study, which examined the reinforcing effects of mothers’ contingent imitation of their infants’ vocalizations. Three infants aged 7–12 months who could vocalize sounds but not words participated with two caregivers for each infant (i.e., triads). During the intervention phase, the caregivers were asked to immediately imitate all vocalizations emitted by the child for a 3-min period. During the yoked control phase, the caregivers listened to an audio recording from the preceding condition and provided vocalizations non-contingently on the infants’ responses. The procedures yielded different results across participants; one infant emitted a higher frequency of vocalizations during the contingent imitation phases over the control phases, and the other two infants showed higher rates of responding during the control phases. However, all infants emitted more imitative return vocalizations during contingent reinforcement conditions compared with the yoked control condition.     

The Effects of Early Institutionalization on the Discrimination of Facial Expressions of Emotion in Young Children

The current study examined the effects of institutionalization on the discrimination of facial expressions of emotion in three groups of 42‐month‐old children. One group consisted of children abandoned at birth who were randomly assigned to Care‐as‐Usual (institutional care) following a baseline assessment. Another group consisted of children abandoned at birth who were randomly assigned to high‐quality foster care following a baseline assessment. A third group consisted of never‐institutionalized children who were reared by their biological parents. All children were familiarized to happy, sad, fearful, and neutral facial expressions and tested on their ability to discriminate familiar versus novel facial expressions. Contrary to our prediction, all three groups of children were equally capable of discriminating among the different expressions. Furthermore, in contrast to findings at 13–30 months of age, these same children showed familiarity rather than novelty preferences toward different expressions. There were also asymmetries in children’s discrimination of facial expressions depending on which facial expression served as the familiar versus novel stimulus. Collectively, early institutionalization appears not to impact the development of the ability to discriminate facial expressions of emotion, at least when preferential looking serves as the dependent measure. These findings are discussed in the context of the myriad domains that are affected by early institutionalization.     

The Effect of Social Responsiveness on Infants' Object‐Directed Imitation

Previous research has demonstrated that social interactions underlie the development of object‐directed imitation. For example, infants differentially learn object action sequences from a live social partner compared to a social partner over a video monitor; however, what is not well understood is what aspects of social interactions influence social learning. Previous studies have found variable influences of different types of caregiver responsiveness on attention, language, and cognitive development. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how the responsive style of a social partner influenced the learning of object‐directed action sequences. Infants interacted with either a sensitive or redirective experimenter before the learning trial. Results revealed infants changed their patterns of engagement; infants interacting with a sensitive experimenter had longer periods of attentional engagement than infants interacting with a redirective experimenter. Furthermore, during the learning trial, the amount of sensitivity during interaction with the social partner predicted learning scores. These findings suggest that infants' attention is influenced by social partners' interactive style during ongoing interaction, which subsequently affects how infants learn from these social partners.     

How Real is that Smile? Mood Effects on Accepting or Rejecting the Veracity of Emotional Facial Expressions

Does mood influence people’s tendency to accept observed facial expressions as genuine? Based on recent theories of affect and cognition, two experiments predicted and found that negative mood increased and positive mood decreased people’s skepticism about the genuineness of facial expressions. After a mood induction, participants viewed images of faces displaying (a) positive, neutral, and negative expressions (Exp. 1), or (b) displays of six specific emotions (Exp. 2). Judgments of genuineness, valence, and confidence ratings were collected. As predicted, positive affect increased, and negative affect decreased the perceived genuineness of facial expressions, and there was some evidence for affect-congruence in judgments. The relevance of these findings for everyday nonverbal communication and strategic interpersonal behavior are considered, and their implications for recent affect-cognition theories are discussed.     

Psychotherapy with Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individuals

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explored the subjective experiences of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in psychotherapy. Which culturally syntonic considerations are necessary for effective psychotherapy with deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals? The findings support the literature on multiculturalism and deafness that entail effective communication, empowerment processes, cultural sensitivity, therapist role flexibility, the imparting of information, and the development of a positive therapeutic relationship. The data focuses on the experience of communicating rather than focusing solely on the acquisition of content as well as the understanding the clinical dynamics of the transcultural relationship in order to make effective use of the social work relationship in treatment. The findings of this study add richness and depth to the existing literature on psychotherapy, with emphasis on the experiential processes of treatment.     

The Effect of Repetition on Infants' Imitation From Picture Books Varying in Iconicity

Although picture‐book reading is commonplace during infancy, little is known about the impact of this activity on learning. A previous study showed that 18‐ and 24‐month‐olds imitated a novel action sequence presented in a book that was illustrated with realistic color photos, whereas they failed to imitate from books illustrated with less realistic drawings. In the research reported here, we hypothesized that increasing infants' exposure to a picture book would increase learning from books illustrated with both color photos and drawings. Independent groups of 18‐and 24‐month‐olds were exposed to a picture book either twice in succession or 4 times in succession. The results showed that, regardless of the iconicity of the illustrations, increasing the number of reading sessions significantly improved the infants' imitation scores, compared to age‐matched, no‐demonstration controls. The results are discussed in relation to representational insight and cognitive flexibility.     

Mimicry and the Judgment of Emotional Facial Expressions

Lipps (1907) presented a model of empathy which had an important influence on later formulations. According to Lipps, individuals tend to mimic an interaction partner's behavior, and this nonverbal mimicry induces—via a feedback process—the corresponding affective state in the observer. The resulting shared affect is believed to foster the understanding of the observed person's self. The present study tested this model in the context of judgments of emotional facial expressions. The results confirm that individuals mimic emotional facial expressions, and that the decoding of facial expressions is accompanied by shared affect. However, no evidence that emotion recognition accuracy or shared affect are mediated by mimicry was found. Yet, voluntary mimicry was found to have some limited influence on observer' s assessment of the observed person's personality. The implications of these results with regard to Lipps' original hypothesis are discussed.