How to Look Ironic With Your Face and Your Voice (and Should You?)

When you start a conversation with someone, an implicit expectation is that they will tell you veridical things. And yet, in everyday life, false statements, which state things that do not conform to reality, are legion! This include lies, pretense, genuine errors, figures of speech, and fictional discourse. Sometimes false statements are blatantly false as in the case of metaphors such as "Tom's lawyer is a shark." But most often, false statements are not intrinsically false and we identify falseness because we have information about reality that allows us to conclude, for example, that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction, that your 10-year old niece is only pretending to be a schoolteacher, or that the chocolate is not in the blue container but actually in the red container.

How About Nonverbal Clues?

Our special interest is the situation where the speakers themselves provide nonverbal clues that their statements are false. Generally, people want their nonverbal expressions to support their words (for instance, in lying or role play), but there is an exception: when the speaker is being ironic.

Being ironic is a strange move: it consists of saying the opposite of what you think or what happens while simultaneously conveying what you really think! For example, Mark can say "As usual, you're perfectly on time" to Tom who arrives 1 hour late. How do speakers imply what they really think, in such a way that most adults will immediately understand?

To answer this question, we filmed about 100 speakers saying the sentence "Honestly, it was really great" while imagining a certain context (a day at Disneyland). For half of the speakers, the context involved saying the sentence ironically (because actually the day was a fiasco), while for the other half of the speakers, the context involved saying the sentence sincerely (because the day was a success). Importantly, we did not give them any further instructions on how to play their roles. As long as they respected the text, they could act it out in a totally free way.

Ironic Versus Sincere: What Makes The Difference?

First of all, it was very easy for observers to tell them apart: 75% of ironic speakers were recognized as "ironic" and 83% of sincere speakers as "sincere." This shows that people know how to convey these two different attitudes with nonverbal cues.

Furthermore, ironic speakers were still distinguishable from sincere speakers when there was only the image of the speakers (no sound), and when there was only the voice of the speakers (no image)!

When we compared discrimination between ironic and sincere speakers in the voice-only versus image-only conditions, accuracy was better when there was face but no voice. This is interesting because linguists and psycholinguists have talked about an “ironic” tone of voice for several decades, but concerning facial expressions, science says almost nothing! And yet, facial expressions were more reliable in guiding irony judgments than tone of voice.

By analyzing nonverbal behaviors in detail, we observed that ironic speakers differ from sincere speakers in many ways, both in the vocal channel and in the facial channel. The strongest cues were these:

  • Ironic speakers spoke more slowly and made more pauses
  • They smiled less and produced more mouth movements such as twisting the mouth or tightening the lips
  • They looked less at their addressee and produced more “eyebrow flashes” (very rapid raisings of the eyebrows)

Thus, speaking slowly, looking away, and producing eyebrow flashes and unusual mouth movements make up a repertoire of nonverbal cues that ironic speakers can use. This list is probably not exhaustive because irony can be used in many different contexts. While in our study, ironic speakers mainly conveyed disappointment, irony can also be used to convey anger, weariness, disgust, complicity, etc. There are certainly many ways to be ironic.

Now that you know some ways to sound ironic with your face and voice, the question remains: should you? Irony is a device to communicate meaning implicitly. Sometimes it is more fun not to use nonverbal cues to irony and let the other person wonder for a few seconds if you mean it or not… But then, beware of misunderstandings!


For Further Reading

Aguert, M. (2022). Paraverbal expression of verbal irony: Vocal cues matter and facial cues even more. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 46(1), 45‑70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-021-00385-z

Colston, H. L. (2015). Using figurative language. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316226414
 

Marc Aguert is an associate professor of developmental psychology at Caen-Normandy University. His main research interest is the development of figurative language comprehension throughout childhood and adolescence.

 

So You Want to Be Persuasive? Start by Sounding Confident

Persuasion is a ubiquitous part of daily life. We’re surrounded by it. Immersed in it. And, in fact, many of us happily peddle our own brand of persuasive tactics for personal profit. Not surprisingly, oftentimes we’re successful in getting what we want from others—after all, practice makes perfect, and we have a lot of experience perfecting the art of persuasion.  

Why Does Our Voice Play Such An Important Role In Persuasion?

Intuitively as well as empirically, we know that the voice can be a powerful source of information because it often provides valuable insight into the emotions and thoughts of the speaker. We can typically very quickly identify and distinguish between different emotions expressed through the voice, even when the speaker is communicating in a language other than our own. Beyond emotions, a person’s voice also gives clues about their traits, social intentions, and even how they are evaluating a particular situation, person, or object. Some of these vocal features include rate of speech (slow or fast), volume (soft or loud), pitch (low or high), and intonation (for example, sentences that end with rising or falling pitch).

If we consider that changes in a person’s voice can affect our inferences about their psychological states, it doesn’t require a herculean stretch of the imagination to realize that how something is said could also influence the success of a persuasive appeal.

Scientists interested in how voice influences persuasion have recently started piecing together a more detailed picture of this relationship. Although many characteristics of voice can influence our willingness to say yes, the position at the top of the persuasive totem pole seems to be occupied by our perceptions of speaker confidence. This probably isn’t all that surprising given the importance we place on confidence when evaluating our own attitudes and thoughts. In fact, it makes a great deal of sense that how confident a person sounds should also be an important basis for deciding whether we heed someone’s advice or seek a second opinion. So what characteristics of voice reflect confidence?

More confident speakers tend to speak faster, louder, use falling intonation at the end of their sentences, and have lower-pitched voices. Furthermore, listeners also perceive these cues as signs of high confidence. In recent years, my colleagues and I have expanded upon this to show that changes in pitch, in particular, can have very profound effects on persuasion. Our initial research found that listeners tend to be more persuaded by a speaker whose voice has a relatively low versus high pitch. Importantly, when a person was carefully thinking about a message, changes in a speaker’s pitch affected the listener’s attitude by biasing their thoughts to be either positive or negative towards the topic. However, when people were distracted and thus not carefully thinking, changes in pitch affected their attitude without influencing their thoughts—illustrating a completing different process of persuasion. Why does it matter how carefully someone thinks about a persuasive message? The attitudes of people who carefully think about a message (versus those who don’t), are longer lasting, more predictive of their future behavior, more resistant to persuasive attempts, and more accessible in memory.

In our most recent studies, conducted at the University Autonoma de Madrid, my colleagues and I demonstrated that changes in one’s own vocal pitch could affect self-persuasion, changing a person’s attitude not only towards things external to themselves (such as a comprehensive exam proposal for university students) but also towards themselves (general academic abilities). What really surprised us was that pitch increased self-persuasion not only when participants were instructed to talk using a lower compared to higher pitched voice, but also when the keyboard on which they typed their thoughts produced a lower versus higher pitched tone with each keystroke, and in response to the same meditation-style music playing in the background in either a lower versus higher pitch. In all three studies, low pitch enhanced the effect of people’s thoughts on their attitudes, whereas high pitch reduced its impact. So for example, in response to low pitch, positive thoughts led to very positive attitudes, and negative thoughts led to very negative attitudes. However, in response to high pitch, positive thoughts produced only mildly positive attitudes, and negative thoughts only mildly negative attitudes. And the explanation behind this? Confidence. Low pitch increased people’s confidence in their thoughts, whereas high pitched decreased confidence.

So, whether you’re interviewing for an important job, trying to convince your friend to go to the movies, or just want to boost your confidence for that upcoming exam, remember that how you deliver your message is often just as important as its content. In the words of the American poet William Carlos Williams, “It is not what you say that matters, but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages.”


For Further Reading

Guyer, J. J., Briñol, P., Vaughan-Johnston, T. I., Fabrigar, L. R., Moreno, L., & Petty, R. E. (2021). Paralinguistic features communicated through voice can affect appraisals of confidence and evaluative judgments. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 45, 479-504. 10.1007/s10919-021-00374-2

Guyer, J. J., Fabrigar, L. R., & Vaughan-Johnston, T. I. (2018). Speech rate, intonation, and pitch: Investigating the bias and cue effects of vocal confidence on persuasion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(3), 389-405.             https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218787805

Petty, R. E., & Briñol, P. (2020). A process approach to influencing attitudes and changing behavior: Revisiting classic findings in persuasion and popular interventions. In J. Forgas, W. Crano, & K. Fiedler (Eds.), Applications of social psychology: How social psychology can contribute to real world problems (pp 82-103). Psychology Press.


Joshua Guyer is an assistant professor of psychology at IE University and Saint Louis University (in Madrid). Joshua's research interests include the different roles of vocal qualities (emotions, confidence) in persuasion, and different tactics of social influence.

 

The Pain Doctor’s Dilemma

The U.S. is amidst a health crisis involving inequitable pain care: Black Americans receive substandard and less aggressive pain treatment than White Americans. One study indicates that Black patients entering an Emergency Department are about half as likely to be prescribed opioids to cope with their pain when compared to their White counterparts.

Some race differences in the amount or quantity of pain treatment can be traced to prejudice, stereotypes, and gaps in provider empathy. And in addition to this national tendency for Black patients to receive less intensive pain treatment, Black patients also receive less appropriate treatments. For example, according to recent research, Black patients are subjected to higher rates of unnecessary surgery and are more frequently prescribed opioid drugs for migraine symptoms although this is not a guideline-directed treatment.  

How Race And Pain Expression Interact

Medical clinicians treating pain are asked to make quick and accurate decisions about who needs intervention, and of what intensity. Because pain is a subjective experience, these decisions are, in part, based on patients’ nonverbal signals such as facial expressions. Making such decisions is difficult, and we found that how difficult it is depends in part on the target person’s race.  

The research had two phases. First, we made videos of Black and White men and women (“expressers”) while they were showing genuine or feigned pain. This was done while they actually were in pain that we created (with their permission) using a pressure algometer--think of this as a pressure gun that can deliver increasing pressure. In this case, we placed the device on a bone in the expresser’s hand. We also videoed them while they were only pretending they were experiencing the painful pressure. In the photos below, which are screenshots from the videos, the expresser on the left was in genuine pain and the photo on the right is the same expresser showing pretend pain.

two images of black man
two images of a white man

Then, we recruited viewers who identified as Black or White to engage in a pain detection task where they guessed whether each expression was “real” or “fake.”

Expressers’ Race Made A Difference

Viewers in our studies struggled more to distinguish real from faked expressions of pain in videos of Black relative to White expressers (regardless of viewers’ own racial identity).

The videos described above are an unsatisfying parallel to the pain expressions accompanying more serious injuries or medical conditions. So, we created a second version of the pain detection task with more intense pain expressions. Participants viewed images of Black and White men’s professional soccer players who had been seriously injured during gameplay (for example, anterior cruciate ligament rupture, broken tibia) or were faking injury to receive a favorable call (“flopping” or “diving”). Real pain expressions were those in which the player left the field, an injury was documented, and in which the player missed subsequent matches for the injury incurred. For faked expressions, no injury was reported and there was evidence that the expression wasn’t genuine (the player was punished for “simulation” [flopping/diving], the player admitted to flopping/diving, the player immediately returned to play). Again, participants struggled more to distinguish real from fake expressions of pain when judging Black soccer players compared to when judging White soccer players.

Back To The Doctor’s Office

How might an inability to discriminate pain authenticity translate into disparate medical care?

We showed our lab-created videos to a sample of clinicians who, as part of their jobs, regularly recommend or prescribe pain treatment. These clinicians similarly struggled to discern real from fake expressions on the faces of Black relative to White expressers, suggesting that trained clinicians may be similarly susceptible to race deficits in pain authenticity detection.

We also explored the consequences of this pain authenticity deficit for hypothetical pain care recommendations (this time, made by college students rather than clinicians). As in previous research, Black individuals were recommended less intensive hypothetical pain care than White individuals. Importantly, we also found that greater hypothetical pain care was suggested for White individuals expressing real versus fake pain but Black individuals got the same recommendations whether their expressions were real or fake.

Equitable Pain Care And Beyond

Although we focus on implications for equitable pain care, the applications of this work extend well beyond healthcare. Incorrect judgments of friends', colleagues', or strangers' pain authenticity could also be consequential. For example, a referee could be swayed by a player’s “dive” or “flop” and issue a wrongful penalty, or a judge could rule that a pain-expressing plaintiff be compensated for damages they did not incur. Furthermore, misjudging authentic pain as fabricated may lead to equally, or arguably more, serious consequences. A referee could ignore an injured player, or a judge could fail to validate a victim’s suffering.


For Further Reading

Lloyd, E. P., Lloyd, A. R., McConnell, A. R., & Hugenberg, K. (2021). Race deficits in pain detection: Medical providers and laypeople fail to accurately perceive pain authenticity among Black people. Social Psychological and Personality Science.   https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211045887

Hoffman, K. M., Trawalter, S., Axt, J. R., & Oliver, M. N. (2016). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(16), 4296-4301. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159224

Mende-Siedlecki, P., Qu-Lee J., Backer, R., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2019). Perceptual contributions to racial bias in pain recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(5), 863-889. https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fxge0000600
 

E. Paige Lloyd is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Denver. She examines impression formation with a focus on how response biases and the ability to accurately read others’ cues can manifest in discrimination and inequitable treatment. 

It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It


In the 1970s, the psychologist Albert Mehrabian suggested that only 7% of the information in speech is contained in the words. The real information, he suggested, was contained in the visual signals we use (the grimaces, the hand-waves, the body movements) and the way we say it (the intonations and inflections, how loudly we speak). These, he suggested, explain 55% and 38%, respectively, of the meaning. His suggestion caused a big stir at the time, but later he was widely criticized for various good reasons, and his ideas have been forgotten.

Our interest in this issue was motivated by the observation that, in a valiant attempt to get at the mechanisms involved in processing communication cues, many studies focus on the meaning encoded in how we say a single word or expression, or even just a laugh. They invariably forget that the words we use are just the bricks that create conversations, and it is the conversations, not the words, that create the elegantly beautiful building of our relationships.

To explore this, we asked a group of native English speakers and a group of native Spanish speakers to listen to audio-only clips of two people engaged in a completely natural conversation. Could they identify the quality of the speakers’ relationship with each other from just hearing what they said and how they said it? We used audio clips representing eight different relationship qualities including such contexts as friends in idle chat mode, friendly banter, provocation, gossip, and annoyance. To avoid boredom, the clips were short (30-60 seconds), but always involved two speakers. Participants listened to clips in only one language (either their own or the other less familiar language), but they listened to three separate versions of the clips. One was the full audio clip; the second was a version in which the words had been masked electronically so that they could hear the rise and fall of the voices but not the words themselves—a bit like sitting at the back of a busy restaurant when you can hear the conversations around you, but not really distinguish what is actually being said; and finally, a version in which the conversation had been converted to pure tones, so that much of the richness of the audio signal was lost, but not the rise and fall of the two distinct voices. They heard all eight clips for each version together in randomized order, so the chances of remembering clips one version to the next was actually quite slight.

We found that, on the full (unaltered) audio clip, people were around 80% accurate on identifying whether the relationship was positive or negative (the criterion in almost all these kinds of experiments), against an expectation of 50% had they responded at random. Moreover, they still managed 75% accuracy with the altered vocal clips, and even 60% accuracy with the pure tone versions (still well above chance). Even when asked to identify the actual type of relationship in individual clips, they performed at much better than chance level: around 30% correct on the full audio clip, and 20% correct on the other two versions—against an expectation of just 12.5% if they had been responding at random. More importantly, both groups of language speakers were as good with the other language as they were with their own.

So it seems that Mehrabian was right after all. Notwithstanding all the criticism of his claims, a lot of the information about social relationships is contained in the nonverbal cues—though our results suggest it is more like 80% than the 93% estimated by Mehrabian. In other words, we certainly get some additional information from the words, but actually we could get by pretty well without them.

That does raise a puzzle. If so little information is contained in the words, why do we have language at all? We could have carried on growling and whinnying at each other, and that would have done just fine. So what difference do the words actually make? I would suggest it allows us to do two thing: specify time and place.

Nonverbal communication, like the equally complex vocal communication of all monkeys and apes, is very good at telling you how I feel about you right now, but it won’t allow me to tell you how I felt about you last month—or would like to feel about you next month. It won’t allow me to suggest that we meet up at the coffee bar on Main Street at four o’clock next Thursday—or that I met Susan and James there last Thursday. What’s more important, perhaps, is that I couldn’t tell you a story that required you to imagine being in another time or place. There would be no novels and no plays, no histories and no community folklore. And it is these that provide an important part of community bonding.


For Further Reading

Dunbar, R. I. M., Robledo del Canto, J.-P., Tamarit, I., Cross, I., & Smith, E. (2021). Nonverbal auditory cues allow relationship quality to be inferred during conversations. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-021-00386-y.
 

Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK, and he studies social evolution in humans and other primates.

 

Your Tears Can Function as a Social Glue

Have you ever wondered what is the purpose of shedding tears? This question has puzzled scientists for many decades, especially since humans seem to be the only species that cries in response to emotional situations. Other bodily responses have obvious functions: sweating to cool down the body, urinating to rid waste, and shedding basal tears to keep the eye lubricated. But what exactly is the purpose of emotional tears?

For infants and children, the vocal cry—accompanied by tears as children get older—functions to alert a caregiver of a need or problem. It acts like a siren, requesting help and thereby increasing the infant’s chances of survival. However, why would humans continue to shed tears after childhood?

Researchers have considered two main functions of emotional crying:

  • that it helps the crier feel better by releasing tension or restoring a bodily balance, and
  • that it—similar to the vocal cry in infants—signals to other people that we need their attention and support.

Evidence for the first proposition has been mixed, as people typically think that their tears will improve their mood, but they report no improved—or even a worsened—state, if asked right after shedding a tear.

We tested the second proposition—a communicative function—in a recent study. We presented people in 41 countries, across all populated continents, with a large pool of photographs of adults with neutral expressions from different backgrounds for whom tears were either digitally added or not. Expressions were embedded in different neutral, positive, or negative written scenarios (for example, the photographs were taken while the person attended a funeral or reunited with an old friend). We asked participants to evaluate the depicted person (did they seem warm, friendly, competent?) and how they would react to them (would they offer to help them?).

It’s Similar Around The World

In all countries, people said that they would be more likely to support a crying person in contrast to people showing no tears—regardless of their gender, ethnicity, or the reason why they cried. This tendency was influenced by the fact that criers appeared warmer, more sympathetic, and more helpless, and raters felt a stronger connection towards them.

Tears do indeed function as a social glue—they facilitate support when we feel helpless and need it most. So, does that mean that tears mainly fulfill a communicative function? What about a recovery function? The answer is not straightforward, as previous research has shown that shedding tears improves mood when criers receive support from others. This suggests that emotional crying can actually fulfill both functions. People seem to cry to send a potent signal that they’re in need, which then triggers support behavior by others, which helps the crier regulate their emotions and recover, mentally and physically. This would suggest that shedding tears when others are around is more effective than shedding tears in private.

Paradoxically, studies suggest that people report crying most often when they are on their own, likely due to social norms. Crying in public isn’t typically seen as appropriate, and crying is considered unmanly in many cultures. However, swallowing your tears because of social conventions might block the helpful effects often associated with letting your tears flow. 

Why is it exactly that tears have evolved as the main signal of being in need in adults, and not other expressions, like vocal cries or the position of the eyebrows? While we can only speculate, there are several possible evolutionary reasons for this. Vocal cries are a potent signal that can be heard over distance; however, loud cries can attract potential predators. This may be why they’re replaced with silent tears as one grows older and can seek out support.

At the same time, tears can be easily recognized from a large distance, as they can reflect the light. There are also studies suggesting that people are even able to recognize tears subliminally (that is, without being completely aware of them), so they are an extremely noticeable signal—likely more noticeable than positions of the eyebrows.

Additionally, for the crier, shedding tears results in a blurred vision, restricting the performance of tasks that require a clear sight and most importantly aggressive actions such as attacks. Bystanders could therefore infer that the crier is harmless and approach them without fearing any negative consequences, so assistance would be more likely.

Some researchers have argued that emotional tears represent an action that makes us ultimately human. Shedding emotional tears seems to serve an important purposeful bodily function, just as sweating or urinating, that signals to others a need for help and binds us together like a social glue.


For Further Reading

Gračanin, A., Bylsma, L. M., & Vingerhoets, A. J. (2018). Why only humans shed emotional tears. Human Nature, 29(2), 104-133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-018-9312-8

MacArthur, H. J., & Shields, S. A. (2019). How you cry, when you cry, why you cry, and who you are: Responses to adult crying in social contexts. In U. Hess & S. Hareli (Eds.), The social nature of emotion expression (pp. 209-225). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32968-6_12

Zickfeld, J. H., van de Ven, N., Pich, O., Schubert, T. W., Berkessel, J. B., Pizarro, J. J., ... & Vingerhoets, A. (2021). Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104137


Janis Zickfeld is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Management and Center for Integrative Business Psychology at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research focuses on the causes and effects of social emotions and moral behavior.

What are College Teacher Evaluations Really Based on?


In his TED talk, Chris Anderson reminded us that nonverbal communication and its enormous impact were fine-tuned and perfected by millions of years of evolution. He believes that online video lectures, such as TED and MOOCs, will revolutionize the spread of ideas in a magnitude similar to the impact that the Guttenberg print-revolution had on the spread of ideas in printed language.

Our research demonstrates that teachers’ expressiveness and enthusiasm plays a critical role in engaging students. Since higher education is going through vast changes towards a digital revolution, nonverbal communication becomes more critical than ever and thus, should have a salient presence in the methodology of evaluating teaching effectiveness.

How Is Instructor Effectiveness Typically Measured?

In the standard method (Students' Evaluations of Teaching or SET), students evaluate their teachers via questionnaires at course end, focusing on aspects such as clarity, organization, and exams. The consensual view is that these evaluations reflect "student satisfaction" as a proxy for learning outcomes and "objective" lecturer evaluations that are more difficult to measure.

Is There Another Way?

Yes. A different approach exists, which measures the teacher’s nonverbal cues of expressivity and enthusiasm that are called nonverbal immediacy or NVI. However, this approach and the SET approach have been totally estranged from each other for decades! And this is despite research showing that ratings of brief instances of instructors' nonverbal behavior also predict overall student evaluations. SET scholars reject the validity of teachers' nonverbal expressivity, viewing nonverbal predictors of teaching effectiveness as potential biases that might disguise unsatisfactory pedagogy, for example a teacher who is charming and likeable but whose students don’t learn much.

The estrangement between the two approaches could have been resolved long ago by administering both sets of questionnaires in the classrooms of the same teachers. That is exactly what we did in our 2021 research, hypothesizing that both sets of data reflect components of teaching effectiveness. Kahneman's theory of "fast and slow thinking" perfectly describes how NVI and SET might fit together in student evaluations. Students’ impressions of the teacher’s nonverbal expressiveness and enthusiasm, reflecting “fast thinking,” are formed intuitively right at the beginning of the course. Ratings of clarity, content, and didactic organization at the end of the course reflect slow and reasoned thinking.

At different points in time during their courses—with several hundred instructors in two colleges—we gave students both types of questionnaires. Correlations between the two sets of evaluations were extremely high, meaning an instructor either got high ratings on both, or low ratings on both—in other words, the two kinds of evaluations were close to being interchangeable. Thus, teaching effectiveness can be validly measured by both conventional didactic SET and expressive NVI delivery style. For three quarters of the teachers, their high or low standing matched on the two kinds of evaluation, and only for a quarter of the teachers was there a discrepancy—for example, where the traditional SET ratings were high while the nonverbal NVI ratings were low. Thus, a teacher can be good by conventional standards while being rather dull nonverbally, and vice versa, but such instances are very much in the minority.

The Importance of Teachers’ Nonverbal Communication

Thus, instead of viewing fast, intuitive evaluations as biased and educationally irrelevant, they must be viewed as effective predictors of subsequent slow evaluations. We actually believe it is likely that the later evaluations are heavily affected by the earlier impressions, meaning students are fitting their late, more complex judgments to their already existing intuitive judgments.

We maintain that in the 2020s, the emphasis of effective teaching is shifting from didactics to the style of delivery—from conveying information in a clear and organized manner, to inspiring enthusiasm and curiosity in students. The digital revolution of the last decades has been fully cemented by the COVID-19 epidemic and the necessity to abandon conventional frontal classroom teaching. Nonverbal communication plays a critical role in this revolution. Interactive online videos take center stage in online learning. Students would probably prefer to substitute a dull old-fashioned teacher with a charismatic and inspiring MOOC or TED instructor.

TED talks, in fact, are a good example of "acquired charisma." The long and massive training involved in the preparation of TED talks suggests that charisma and enthusiasm are trainable, rather than being some kind of natural endowment. Teachers will have to undergo massive training for improving their delivery style and nonverbal communication skills. And these aspects would need to be measured in student evaluations collected as early as possible in the course, so as to allow timely and effective feedback to the teachers.


For Further Reading

Babad, E., Sahar-Inbar, L., Hammer, R., Turgeman-Lupo, K., & Nessis, S. (2021). Student evaluations fast and slow: It's time to integrate teachers' nonverbal behavior in evaluations of teaching effectiveness. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 45,  321–338.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-021-00364-4

Kahneman, Daniel (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Macmillan.

Pinto, M. B., & Mansfield, P. M. (2010). Thought processes college students use when evaluating faculty: A qualitative study. American Journal of Business Education, 3(3), 55-61. 


Elisha Babad is Professor Emeritus in educational and social psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His research includes teacher expectancy effects in classrooms and the teacher's pet phenomenon. More recent research is on the influence of TV interviewers’ nonverbal behavior on viewers' perceptions of the interviewee, voters' wishful thinking, and the role of nonverbal behavior in student evaluations of teachers.

Ronen Hammer is the head of the Center of the Advancement of Teaching and an instructor at the Instructional Technologies Department at HIT - Holon Institute of Technology, Israel.

Limor Sahar-Inbar is an instructor at the Industry Engineering and Technology Management Department and a team member at the Center of the Advancement of Teaching at HIT Holon Institute of Technology, Israel. Her research examines consumers' preferences between volume and similarity in electronic word of mouth.

Trust at First Sight

When we meet a person for the first time, we try to form a first impression on the basis of little information and often facial cues drive our evaluations. Recent research has shown that among the various facial cues that guide our impressions, the eyes are the most relevant. Eyes attract our attention from birth and we are often convinced that we understand people's emotions and intentions simply by looking them in the eye.

Reading Meaning into Pupil Size

Everyone knows that the eyes’ pupils change size according to lighting conditions. But other factors influence pupil size as well, and people may believe that such changes indicate deeper characteristics of a person, and are not just responses to lighting. Thus, an interaction partner with larger pupils may be perceived as positive and beautiful, while one with small pupils, cold and distant. The reason is thought to be that larger pupils imply positive emotions.

But how much influence does a person’s pupils really have on how other people react? After all, such changes are typically subtle. Would bigger pupils inspire liking and trust?

To find out, we asked college students to look at faces on the computer screen. Some faces had bigger pupils (40% larger than a standard pupil)  and some had smaller pupils (40% smaller than a standard pupil), as you can see in the image below.

Closeup Images of men's eyes

With a joystick, participants could make the face appear to come closer (by getting larger) or get farther away (by getting smaller). This way, we approximated people’s willingness to interact with someone based on that person’s pupil size.

In fact, the desire to interact with the people on the screen was strongly influenced by the level of pupil dilation. Participants were less willing to “approach” faces with contracted pupils, and they  were more willing to “approach” people with dilated pupils.

In another study we found out that eye pupils of an interaction partner influenced trust and even willingness to conform to the partner’s opinions. Participants were asked estimate the number of letters displayed on a computer screen in less than 5 seconds. In doing so, participants saw the estimation provided by a stranger whose eye pupils were either large or small. People trusted others’ estimations more when their pupils were large and conformed to their responses. In other words, when looking into dilating pupils participants formed a positive impression of the interaction partner and this made them more susceptible to their judgment and conform.  

Overall, our work suggests that that subtle facial features of the people we interact with influence our behavior. This is even more surprising when we consider that at present there is no scientific evidence that shows a difference in terms of character, personality, and intentions as a function of pupil dilation. Changes in pupil size are unconscious and automatic and people believe that such changes provide a reflection of a person’s inner state even if research has not shown it yet. Our results shed light on the factors that promote interpersonal relationships and may impact upon marketing and advertising, domains that often use images of faces.


For Further Reading

Brambilla, M., Biella, M., & Kret, M.E. (2019). Looking into your eyes: Observed pupil size influences approach-avoidance responses. Cognition and Emotion, 33, 616-622doi: 10.1080/02699931.2018.1472554

Brambilla, M., Biella, M., & Kret, M.E. (2019). The power of pupils in predicting conforming behavior. Social Influence, 14, 40-49. doi: 10.1080/15534510.2019.1637775

Mattavelli, S., Brambilla, M., & Kret, M.E. (in press). It is written in the eyes: Inferences from pupil size and gaze orientation shape interpersonal liking. Social Cognition.
 

Marco Brambilla is Associate Professor of Social Psychology and Director of the Social Perception and Cognition Lab at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He investigates how people perceive, judge, and behave toward others.

 

A Smile by Any Other Name Wouldn’t Look as Sweet


You catch a smile from someone, and it somehow conveys more than just simple charm. It’s warm, it’s inviting. It feels genuine, as though it’s conveying true happiness. This smile does not feel like every other smile because, well, it is not every other smile! Not every smile is created equal, but what then, makes these smiles so special?

The smile described above is likely a “Duchenne smile.” Named after 19th-century French anatomist G.B. Duchenne, these smiles use distinctive facial muscles. We often think of smiles as the upturning of one’s lips, but a Duchenne smile is that, and much more. A Duchenne smile also involves a pulling up of the cheeks, a squinting of the eyes, and perhaps, the appearance of crow’s feet.

Now, as many of us can attest to, a “regular” smile can be deliberately used to convey different emotions such as a pleasantry or underlying slyness. It offers us utility and diversity in expression, and in that way, it is important to have it easily on hand. This also makes the emotional content of “regular” smiles particularly hard to identify. This was especially salient before COVID-19 vaccines were widely available, as a majority of us had our mouths covered in public, effectively relegating the “regular” smile to undetectable. 

The same cannot be said of a Duchenne smile. While Duchenne smiles can be done on purpose by many people, their interpretation is less diverse. Duchenne smiles are more likely to convey a singular message: “I’m happy” or at least are often perceived as more genuine and happier than regular smiles. They are interpreted as a more honest message about emotions, where a regular smile might not be. That is part of what makes these smiles so appealing, but perhaps there’s more to it than just that.

Frequent Duchenne smiling may also be a sign chronic positive mood. While one Duchenne smile may indicate a happy moment in one’s life, a collection of Duchenne smiles over a period may indicate a general happy feeling over that period. Chronic positive mood confers benefits in social and health domains, and as such can serve as a sign of one’s psychological fitness. 

My collaborators and I ran a preliminary test of this idea in a recent study. In this study, participants self-reported their well-being and submitted photos of themselves. Photos were then standardized to show only participants’ faces, yielding 162 faces with varying smiling intensity and associated self-reports of felt well-being.

Research assistants then rated each of these photos for “overall happiness,” “genuineness of the smile,” “smiling in the mouth,” and “smiling in the eyes.” Genuineness of the smiles, intensity of the smile in the mouth area, and intensity of the smile in the eyes area were all associated with participants’ self-reported positive moods. The more positive participants’ moods, the more research assistants perceived the smiles in their pictures as genuine and intense in the mouth and eyes. This finding supports the idea that perceptions of smiles may be a reliable indicator of underlying felt moods, specifically happiness and chronic positive mood.          

Happiness in the Moment versus a Life that Makes Happiness

When discussing “happiness,” a clear distinction must be made. Happiness is an emotional state that can be transitory, but a person may also live a life that is generally happy. This is something the ancient Greeks talked about. They talked about living life to the “highest human good” and achieving virtue through action, which in turn will produce happiness. Thus, the momentary state of happiness is not the same as a way of living.

How does this fit with our understanding of Duchenne smiling? Perhaps, the Duchenne smile serves multiple purposes. For one, frequent Duchenne smiles may be interpreted as a sign of the person’s chronic positive mood. Secondly, given that chronic positive mood is in part predicted by living a virtuous, and rewarding life, Duchenne smiles may be an indicator of underlying life patterns. In other words, “living good” leads to “feeling good.” A person who lives such a life is more likely to engage in activities that bring them happiness, and thus might exhibit a happier demeanor and perhaps a greater number of Duchenne smiles. 

Therefore, a happy demeanor and Duchenne smiles might serve as a sign of a good person, and thus a person whom we would want to affiliate and cooperate with. Thus, Duchenne smiles may have served and perhaps continue to serve an evolutionary purpose. Duchenne smiles could be a nonverbal sign that cooperating with this person could be rather fruitful given that they lead a “good” life.

Back to the question that we started with: What is in a smile? It turns out much more than you may have considered. A Duchenne smile is likely to convey real feelings of joy, it perhaps means that this person often feels positive moods and is someone you want to work with. So, the next time you see a smile that warms your heart, you know that it may be for good reason.


For Further Reading

Sheldon, K. M., Corcoran, M., & Sheldon, M. (2021). Duchenne smiles as honest signals of chronic positive mood. Perspectives on Psychological Science, doi.org/10.1177/1745691620959831
 

Mike Corcoran is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Cabrini University. He studies well-being, goals, and motivation. 

Expression of Affection Through Touch Across Cultures

Do people all over the world kiss their partners and hug their friends? Is it common to stroke children? Presumably, culture influences our touch behaviors but how? And if there are differences between cultures, why do these exist?

It has been hard to answer all these questions based on scarce and sometimes contrasting evidence. Aiming to explore the global differences and similarities in the expression of affection through interpersonal touch, we asked over 14,000 adults from 45 countries whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child (if they had children) during the preceding week.

We found that all over the world, embracing, stroking, kissing, and hugging were reported most often in relationships with partners and children—strikingly, we observed this pattern in countries that are as diverse and distant from one another as Spain, Sweden, Australia, Russia, and South Korea, among others. Although friends were often hugged and embraced, they were rather seldom stroked or kissed. Simply speaking, diverse and intimate touch seems to be universally more important in the closest, personal relationships. This comes as no surprise when one thinks about all the benefits of positive touch—it promotes well-being, strengthens romantic relationships, increases bonding between parents and offspring, and can even enhance the growth of an infant's brain! Still, we were impressed that people use these kinds of touch to foster partnership and parenting all over the world.

This universality of affectionate touch strongly points to a biological or evolutionary foundation for its importance in establishing and maintaining close relationships.

Nevertheless, the amount of affectionate touch did differ in interesting ways between countries. For example, in Italy, Estonia, Romania, Spain, and Mexico only about 2% of the participants declared not touching their partner at all during the week preceding our study, while in the U.S. it was almost 16%, in Uganda more than 20%, and in China 43% of all people who took part in our research! Many of our outcomes fit with the classical “contact vs. non-contact culture” distinction proposed by the anthropologist E. T. Hall and previous research suggesting differences in preferred interpersonal physical distance between cultures.

The next challenge was to explore the many other individual and cultural factors that we measured, hoping some might explain some of this cross-cultural diversity. To grasp the touch diversity for each individual we counted how many touch types every person used—no touch at all? one, two, three, or four types of affectionate touch? Further, we averaged the responses within cultures/countries so that we could make a statement about whole groups, not just the individual people.

Where is the Diversity of Touch Greatest? And Why?

People used more types of affectionate touch in warmer, less conservative, and less religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. Can we explain why touch can be less restricted in some places?

Explaining cultural differences has to be speculative, but we can make some good guesses. The positive link between temperature and touch diversity may be because warmer climate and pleasant weather lead to increased frequency of interpersonal interactions, promote interpersonal trust, and thereby facilitate the formation of closer social networks.

We can also speculate on our findings associating conservatism and religiosity with decreased expression of affection with the use of touch. People, or groups, must adapt to environmental challenges in order to survive and reproduce. One example would be how much a society is burdened with the likelihood of different infectious diseases. Research has consistently shown that high, local risk of infections predicts higher conservatism, religiosity, and disgust sensitivity. Consequently, it is likely that in our evolutionary past also a more careful approach to bodily contact between individuals emerged in places burdened with high infection risk. Transfer of these values from our ancestors has probably happened through imprinting, inheritance, and adherence to stricter family values in such cultures.

As for the individual factors shaping touch diversity, our data again confirmed that touch is crucial for creating and strengthening social bonds. Therefore, its behavioral expression can be the richest among people for whom bonding and physical contact are the most important, namely young women and people with smaller interpersonal distance preferences.

In conclusion, cultural values affect our general inclination to use or avoid affectionate touch and modify the diversity of touch behaviors in a range of social relationships. However, individual factors may greatly enhance the expression or restriction of touch behaviors.


For Further Reading

Gallace, A., & Spence, C. (2010). The science of interpersonal touch: An overview. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 34, 246–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2008.10.004

Sorokowska, A., Saluja, S., Sorokowski, P., Frąckowiak, T., Karwowski, M., Aavik, T., ... & Croy, I. (2021). Affective interpersonal touch in close relationships: A cross-cultural perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220988373

Suvilehto, J. T., Glerean, E., Dunbar, R. I., Hari, R., & Nummenmaa, L. (2015). Topography of social touching depends on emotional bonds between humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(45), 13811-13816. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1519231112


Agnieszka Sorokowska is an Associate Professor at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Her research interests include cross-cultural, sensory, and social psychology.

Do Preschoolers Across Cultures Vary in How They Express Their Disappointment?


While feeling disappointed is a common experience in our daily lives, how people express or hide their disappointment varies based on the situation and their cultural upbringing. But how much do preschoolers from different cultures vary in how they express disappointment? Do young children already know how to “hide” their disappointment when interacting with adults? And, if so, do they know how to do it in ways that are specific to their culture, or does it take many more years of schooling and disappointments to learn how to do that?

The “Disappointing Gift” Scenario

To answer these questions, we looked at how preschoolers living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Beijing, and Tokyo reacted to a situation called the “disappointing gift” scenario. In this situation, children looked at several potential prizes, or “gifts,” and ranked their most through least favorite. Their favorite might be a fire truck or some bubbles, and their least favorite might be a broken comb or a bottle cap. Then, they were told that they would receive their favorite gift when the experimenter came back. Unfortunately, instead of their favorite gift, such as the bubbles, children got their least favorite gift—the broken comb.

As you can imagine, most children felt, and even said they felt disappointed. However, even though they said they felt disappointed, they were also more likely to show a positive expression such as a smile when they received and were shown the “disappointing” gift by an adult. It wasn’t until the adult left that they showed expressions of sadness. This suggests that even preschoolers are already able to “hide” their disappointment from others in social settings.

But Culture Made a Difference

Children from the three cultures had somewhat different reactions, depending on whether an adult was present when they received the disappointing gift. Preschoolers in the United States showed more sadness than the Chinese or Japanese children, both in the presence of an adult and when they were left alone.

In predominantly White, urban, middle-class cultures of the United States, making one’s needs known and expressing one’s true self via emotions, whether positive or negative, are highly valued. In contrast, in many cultures and locations, including China and Japan, controlling one’s emotions is highly valued because expressing strong emotions may jeopardize group harmony. What surprised even us was that children as young as three or four would already know and follow their cultural values. Chinese and Japanese preschoolers, who are actively being taught how they should behave in the presence of others, displayed less sadness and other negative expressions than children in the United States.

Also, there were some subtle differences across the two Asian cultures. Japanese children showed a decrease in neutral facial expressions (where a neutral expression would have brows in resting position, eyes normally open and mouth relaxed) after they received the disappointing gift. Chinese children, however, showed similar levels of neutral expressions across different phases of our task. In essence, it was as if they were showing a “poker face,” even though the Chinese children were also the most likely to say that they felt “sad” or “bad” when asked about how they felt. However, if Chinese children tend to “suppress” their facial expressions of emotions, then why would they be more likely to say that they felt bad? These and other questions suggest that young children are highly sensitive to how the adults and culture around them provide opportunities to express their feelings, and that there are cultural variations in emotion expression to the exact same situation which can be observed as early as preschool.

Chinese children’s higher “suppression” of their facial expressions could reflect the possibility that even preschoolers know the “display rules” for disappointing situations—rules for how and when a particular emotion may be expressed in their culture. Chinese culture values emotional control. Thus, Chinese children may have already learned that not betraying their negative emotions through facial expressions, even when disappointed, is the “right” thing to do.

The fact that children as young as preschoolers can already “hide” or “suppress” their emotions suggests that it is important to understand how cultures, families, and schools shape children’s emotional development and to consider our own goals and practices as we observe and react to the emotions of the children among us.


For Further Reading

Ip, K. I., Miller, A. L., Karasawa, M., Hirabayashi, H., Kazama, M., Wang, L., Olson, S. L., Kessler, D., & Tardif, T. (2020). Emotion expression and regulation in three cultures: Chinese, Japanese, and American preschoolers’ reactions to disappointment. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 201, 104972. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104972

Ka I Ip is the Susan-Nolen Hoeksema Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. His research focuses on understanding how sociocultural contexts shape emotion regulation and the developing brain. Twitter: @KaIIp4
 

Twila Tardif is Professor of Psychology and Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Her primary research interests explore relationships between language, culture, and cognition and how emotional experiences are grounded in culture.