Social and emotional messages of smiling: An ethological approach.

Abstract

Did smiling evolve as an expression of happiness, friendliness, or both? Naturalistic observation at a bowling alley (N-1,793 balls) shows that bowlers often smile when socially engaged, looking at and talking to others, but not necessarily after scoring a spare or a strike. In a second study, bowlers (N =166 balls) rarely smiled while facing the pins but often smiled when facing their friends. At a hockey game, fans (N = 3,726 faces) smiled both when they were socially involved and after events favorable to their team. Pedestrians (TV = 663) were much more likely to smile when talking but only slightly more likely to smile in response to nice weather than to unpleasant weather. These four studies suggest a strong and robust association of smiling with a social motivation and an erratic association with emotional experience. Everyday experience suggests that smiling is one of the most common nonverbal signals used in communication among humans. Despite this, and despite more than 100 years of research on facial expressions, we still know relatively little about the causation of smiling and its social functions. In this article we attempt to provide evidence about the causation of smiling in social settings and to raise some neglected questions about the analysis of facial expressions in general. Research and thought on the facial expression of emotion has had a checkered history since the publication of Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872, as has been documented by a number

Are smiles a sign of happiness? Spontaneous expressions of judo winners

“…The authors reported that 29 out of 40 judo fighters displayed Duchenne smiles after winning a gold-or bronze-medal match. Matsumoto and Willingham concluded that sociality was not a variable related to the display of smiles, and previous findings supporting a link between smiling and social interaction (Fernández-Dols & Ruiz-Belda, 1995;Kraut & Johnston, 1979;Ruiz-Belda et al, 2003) were actually nonfindings because of methodological flaws. Matsumoto and Willingham (2006, p. 576) wrote: "[Our] results contrast to the findings of previous field studies reporting nonfindings (Fernández-Dols & Ruiz-Belda, 1995;Kraut & Johnston, 1979;Ruiz-Belda et al, 2003).…”

“…Requirement (a) was unfulfilled in the studies with happy bowlers, and -to some extent -to hockey and soccer fans' studies (Kraut & Johnston, 1979;Ruiz-Belda et al, 2003), but it was fulfilled in Fernández-Dols and Ruiz-Belda's (1995) study with gold medalists. Requirement (b) was unaccomplished by Kraut and Johnston's study, which was carried out in 1979 -when video recordings were unusualbut it was also ignored by Willingham (2006, 2009), who based their findings on an unsystematic sample of still photographs taken by a sports photographer.…”

“…A landmark in the study of the social and emotional causes of smiling is Kraut and Johnston's (1979) pioneering naturalistic observation of bowlers making a strike, ice hockey fans cheering their team, and pedestrians on a sunny day. The probability of detecting a smile during interactive times was significantly higher than during non-interactive times (.42 vs. .04 for bowlers, .27 vs. .12 for ice hockey fans, and .62 vs. .12 for pedestrians).…”

Sex differences in emotion: Expression, experience, and physiology.

“…At this point, it is important to note that a number of emotion theories and recent empirical studies suggest that both men and women's expressive behavior is particularly susceptible to modification by various social factors (e.g., Buck, Losow, Murphy, & Costanzo, 1992;Ekman & Friesen, 1975;Ekman et al, 1982;Fridlund, 1994;Frijda, 1993;Gross & John, 1997;Halberstadt et al, 1995;Kraut & Johnson, 1979;Levenson, 1994). Indeed, expressivity serves both informative and evocative functions in the social environment (Keltner, 1996).…”

A psycho-ethological approach to social signal processing

“…This view is supported by the observation that emotional expressions have significant impacts on perceivers in a variety of domains: social inferences (Hess et al 2000;Knutson 1996), competitive interactions (Camras 1980), and cooperative actions (Brown et al 2003;Mehu et al 2007a, b). In addition, emotional expressions are particularly salient in social contexts (Kraut and Johnston 1979;Parkinson 2005). Still, emotional expressions have also been shown to provide individual benefits through emotional regulation (Gross and Levenson 1997;Keltner and Bonanno 1997;Papa and Bonanno 2008) but also through enhanced sensory acquisition .…”