Smiling in photographs: childhood similarities between sexes become differences constant in adulthood

Contemporary published photographs of 1639 children, 200 older teenagers, and 304 adults in North America were analyzed for the smiling pattern (full, partial, or none) exhibited by individuals by sex. For each of the three age groups and for both sexes, most individuals posed with a full smile. No statistically significant differences in smiling pattern were present between the sexes for photographs of children at preschool and grade-school age. By teenage years, and even more for the adults, there were statistically significant differences between the sexes with regard to a smiling facial expression. In those cases, more female than male subjects smiled fully, whereas more male than female subjects did not smile. Examination of photographs of well-known persons longitudinally through adulthood showed that individuals tended to be consistent in smiling pattern. There was no significant sex difference for this relative constancy of facial expression in posed photographs.     

Smiling and self‐presentation of men and women for job photographs

The present research studied the factors that influence the smiling behaviour of men and women. We assumed that men and women who actively engage in self‐presentation use smiling as a strategy to take advantage of the expectations of others in order to realize their own goals. In the research situation, the participants imagined that they wanted to obtain a certain part‐time job. We expected that gender‐role expectations, the gender‐typing and status of the job in question, and the importance of social contacts for carrying out the job would influence the extent to which men and women would smile for a photo to be sent with a job application. The results partly support this expectation: men and women smiled more in response to a low‐status job than to a high‐status job; women smiled more in response to a job in which social contacts are important than to a job in which social contacts are unimportant; and women smiled more than men in response to a feminine low‐status job in which social contacts are important. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perception of relative and absolute age in facial photographs

Longitudinal series of photographs of faces of secondary school students were used to evaluate observers’ ability to perceive age. Information in individual stimuli was manipulated by masking out parts of the photographs, while information provided by the relations among stimuli was manipulated by task conditions. The ability to perceive relative age was assessed in two tasks requiring subjects to order photographs by age. Absolute age perception was studied in a third task requiring age estimates in years to photographs presented one at a time. While judgments were beyond chance accuracy in all combinations of masking and task conditions, a decrease in either type of information generally produced a decrease in accuracy.

     

Enhanced recall of disgusting relative to frightening photographs is not due to organisation

Previous research has shown that disgusting photographs are better remembered than frightening photographs, even when the two image types have equivalent valence and arousal. However, this work did not control for potential differences in organisation between the disgusting and frightening stimuli that could account for enhanced memory for disgusting photographs. The current research therefore tested whether differences in recall between disgusting and frightening photographs persist when differences in organisation are eliminated. Using a set of disgusting and frightening photographs matched for interrelatedness, Study 1 found that participants recalled more disgusting photographs than frightening photographs. This effect was mediated by increased attention to the disgusting photographs. Study 2 used Latent Semantic Analysis to further interrogate the relatedness of the photographs, providing converging evidence that organisation does not account for enhanced recall of disgusting photographs. Taken together, these results suggest that dimensional models of emotion cannot fully account for emotion’s effects on episodic memory. Instead, disgust appears to enhance recall via a distinctive, attention-mediated mechanism.     

Smiling and Relative Status in News Photographs

Abstract

To test the hypothesis that lower social status is associated with more smiling, the authors used newspaper photographs and their associated news stories as the basis for scoring the smiling and relative social status of the 2 individuals in each photograph. Independent raters judged smiling and 5 dimensions of relative status for 496 individuals in 248 newspaper photographs. There was no relation between status and smiling, although status and smiling were both related to other variables such as gender, age, and story valence. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that there is no generalized relation between smiling and status.     

Smiling virtual agent in social context

A smile may communicate different communicative intentions depending on subtle characteristics of the facial expression. In this article, we propose an algorithm to determine the morphological and dynamic characteristics of virtual agent’s smiles of amusement, politeness, and embarrassment. The algorithm has been defined based on a virtual agent’s smiles corpus constructed by users and analyzed with a decision tree classification technique. An evaluation, in different contexts, of the resulting smiles has enabled us to validate the proposed algorithm.     

Smiling virtual agent in social context

A smile may communicate different communicative intentions depending on subtle characteristics of the facial expression. In this article, we propose an algorithm to determine the morphological and dynamic characteristics of virtual agent's smiles of amusement, politeness, and embarrassment. The algorithm has been defined based on a virtual agent's smiles corpus constructed by users and analyzed with a decision tree classification technique. An evaluation, in different contexts, of the resulting smiles has enabled us to validate the proposed algorithm.     

Smiling in newborns during communicative wake and active sleep

Many studies have investigated infant smiling behaviour during wake and active sleep. In the majority of studies authors agreed that two month-old infants exhibit social smiles. However it is not clear if newborns exhibit different kinds of smiles during wake and active sleep to two month-old infants and if the communicative context can affect the quantity and quality of these smiles.The aim of this study was to test if different kinds of communication affects the amount and the quality of smiles during different behavioural states.Smiling behaviour was analyzed during interactive wake (IW) and active sleep (AS), in 40 newborns randomly assigned to 4 groups of 10 newborns each: continuous tactile communication group, discontinuous non periodic tactile communication group, discontinuous periodic tactile communication group, absent communication group. In the total sample the open/closed mouth (social/non social) smiles ratio was 38/5 during IW and 1/28 during AS (p < .001). Moreover these ratios were different between the four groups.Different kinds of tactile communication affect amount and quality of the smiles of newborns during IW and AS. Moreover the morphological difference of the smiles during IW and AS suggested that for newborns the smiling behaviour during IW could have a social meaning, as it does for two month-old infants.     

Social Motives,Emotional Feelings,and Smiling

Previous research has established that the facial displays of those who listen to stories are influenced by the social context in which this happens. H owever, experienced affect was not measured in these studies, and the story stimuli were not systematically manipulated. We report a study in which participants listened to stories that varied in rated funniness, and that were told by either a friend or a stranger via one of the following channels: Tape recorder, telephone, or face-to-face. D ependent measures included facial activity, subjective feelings, and social motives. We anticipated that facial displays would be influenced by story type and by social context, and that the former effects would be mediated by experienced affect, whereas the latter effects would be mediated by social motives. The funnier story elicited more smiling, but this was not mediated by experienced affect. Social context also influenced smiling, and this effect appeared to be mediated by social motives.     

Gender displays in portrait photographs

Following the research of Goffman (1976) and Henley (1977) on sex differences in nonverbal behavior, 1,296 portrait photographs from high school and university yearbooks and from the media files of a university were analyzed for sex differences. Females smiled with a significantly greater frequency and expansiveness than males and head canted significantly more than males. Results supporting the hypothesis that males would face the camera more directly than females failed to reach the acceptable significance level. The prediction that persons working in opposite-sex roles would deintensify their gender displays failed to gain support.The author expresses appreciation to Bill Drell and Andrea Wilson for their assistance in data collection.     

True photographs and false memories

Abstract— Some trauma-memory-oriented psychotherapists advise clients to review old family photo albums to cue suspected "repressed" memories of childhood sexual abuse. Old photos might cue long-forgotten memories, but when combined with other suggestive influences they might also contribute to false memories. We asked 45 undergraduates to work at remembering three school-related childhood events (two true events provided by parents and one pseudoevent). By random assignment, 23 subjects were also given their school classes' group photos from the years of the to-be-recalled events as memory cues. As predicted, the rate of false-memory reports was dramatically higher in the photo condition than in the no-photo condition. Indeed, the rate of false-memory reports in the photo condition was substantially higher than the rate in any previously published study.     

Self-posed behaviors of females and males in photographs

In a previous study, Ragan (1982) found systematic sex differences in the poses of persons photographed by professional photographers. In this study, 34 female and 34 male subjects posed themselves for a confederate, allegedly a photography student, who took the photographs from which data were drawn to assess sex differences in self-posed photographs. A MANOVA revealed overall significance with females smiling, canting, and orientating away from the camera more than males. An ANOVA produced significant sex differences for only the smiling data. Results are discussed in terms of Goffman's (1976) suggestion that photographers introduce their distortions into photographs and in terms of Duval and Wicklund's theory of objective self-awareness (1972).The author gratefully acknowledges the photographic assistance of Pam Bugg, Clay Langley, Jim Hamilton, and Susan Moore.     

Smiling in a Job Interview: When Less Is More

Two studies examined the effect of applicants’ smiling on hireability. In a pre-test study, participants were asked to rate the expected behavior for four types of applicants. Newspaper reporter applicants were expected to be more serious than applicants for other jobs. In Study 1, participants were randomly assigned to be an applicant or interviewer for a newspaper reporting job. Smiling was negatively related to hiring, and smiling mediated the relation between applicants’ motivation to make a good impression and hiring. Hiring was maximized when applicants smiled less in the middle of the interview relative to the start and end. In Study 2, participants watched Study 1 clips and were randomly assigned to believe the applicants were applying to one of four jobs. Participants rated more suitability when applicants smiled less, especially for jobs associated with a serious demeanor. This research shows that job type is an important moderator of the impact of smiling on hiring.     

Smiling faces rated more feminine than serious faces in Japan

It has been reported that women and girls smile more frequently and more effectively than men and boys. It is expected that this correlation between femaleness and smiling affects the processing of faces, and consequently, smiling faces may be perceived to be more feminine. Participants viewed 30 photographs featuring smiling and serious facial expressions of both male and female subjects and rated them for femininity or masculinity. The result indicated that smiling faces significantly more frequently gave the impression of being more feminine. The interaction between the sex of the faces and their expression was not significant.     

The Effect of Smiling and of Head Tilting on Person Perception

A survey on alcohol and drug use was completed by 1,291 college students. As predicted from research on self-schemas, greater self-efficacy was associated with lower substance use among respondents who indicated having been treated for substance abuse but not among those who had not received treatment. Also, those who reported receiving treatment were more likely than the others to report having attended campus programs on substance abuse. These findings suggest that substance use and its control are important aspects of the self-definition of those who receive treatment for substance abuse.     

Racial differences in sexual activity among affluent adolescents: a relative status approach

ABSTRACT

The experiences of black Americans vary widely depending on socioeconomic status (SES), suggesting that a monotonic view of race is inadequate when examining race differences in adolescent risk behavior. This study considers how class and race intersect as determinants of adolescent multiple sexual partnering. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 3,538), the study adjudicates among three theoretical perspectives, including a relative status hypothesis that draws on Bourdieu’s insights on distinction and Steele’s concept of “stereotype threat.” Findings support the relative status approach: affluent black adolescents have considerably lower odds of engaging in multiple partnering than comparably advantaged whites, suggesting they adjust their behavior to counter stereotypes of “promiscuous” black adolescents.