Unmasking smiles: the influence of culture and intensity on interpretations of smiling expressions
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RESEARCH PAPER
Unmasking smiles: the influence of culture and intensity on interpretations of smiling expressions Xia Fang
. Disa A. Sauter . Gerben A. van Kleef
Received: 19 April 2019 / Revised: 29 October 2019 / Accepted: 13 December 2019 Ó Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019
Abstract A smile can communicate many things: happiness, affiliative intent, or a person’s social status. This means that perceivers need to interpret what a given smile might mean. In the current study, we hypothesized that the interpretation of smiles is influenced by the culture of both the person smiling and of the perceiver, as well as by the intensity of the smile. Chinese and Dutch perceivers rated positivity, negativity, authenticity, and politeness for isolated (Experiment 1) and minimal-context (Experiment 2) low- and high-intensity smiles produced by Chinese and Dutch expressers. Largely consistent with our hypotheses, the culture of the expresser and the intensity of the smile consistently influenced smile interpretation: Dutch smiles were interpreted as more positive and authentic, and as less negative and polite, than were Chinese smiles; high-intensity smiles were interpreted as more positive and authentic, and less negative and polite, than were low-intensity smiles.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41809-019-00053-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. X. Fang D. A. Sauter G. A. van Kleef University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands X. Fang (&) Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada e-mail: [email protected]
However, contrary to our predictions, we did not find a systematic effect of the culture of the perceiver on smile interpretation. Together, these findings provide new evidence for the impact of culture and smile intensity on the interpretation of the social and affective meaning of smiles. Keywords Culture Smile perception Authenticity Politeness
Introduction The smile is a ubiquitous facial expression in daily life (Calvo et al. 2014). Although it is a simple and highly recognizable configuration (Ekman 2003; Sauter 2010), the information carried by the smile is manifold, complex, and often ambiguous (Hess et al. 2002; Matsumoto and Kudoh 1993; Niedenthal et al. 2010; Rychlowska et al. 2017). People often smile when they feel pleasure (e.g., Ekman 1972; Elfenbein and Ambady 2002). However, people have reported also smiling in the absence of pleasant feelings to signal affiliative intent (Niedenthal et al. 2010; Rychlowska et al. 2017). In an emotion production study, people were found to display smiling behavior even during negative emotional experiences (embarrassment; Keltner 1995). Interpreting others’ smiles accurately is important, as misinterpretation may lead to a
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J Cult Cogn Sci
misjudgment of what a given social interaction affords. In the present research, we develop and test th
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