The Effect of the Intensity of Happy Expression on Social Perception of Chinese Faces

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that facial expressions influence trait impressions in the Western context. There are cultural differences in the perception and recognition rules of different intensities of happy expressions, and researchers have only explored the influence of the intensity of happy expressions on a few facial traits (warmth, trustworthiness, and competence). Therefore, we examined the effect of different intensities of Chinese happy expressions on the social perception of faces from 11 traits, namely trustworthiness, responsibility, attractiveness, sociability, confidence, intelligence, aggressiveness, dominance, competence, warmth, and tenacity. In this study, participants were asked to view a series of photographs of faces with high-intensity or low-intensity happy expressions and rate the 11 traits on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = “not very ××,” 7 = “very ××”). The results indicated that high-intensity happy expression had higher-rated scores for sociability and warmth but lower scores for dominance, aggressiveness, intelligence, and competence than the low-intensity happy expression; there was no significant difference in the rated scores for trustworthiness, attractiveness, responsibility, confidence, and tenacity between the high-intensity and low-intensity happy expressions. These results suggested that, compared to the low-intensity happy expression, the high-intensity happy expression will enhance the perceptual outcome of the traits related to approachability, reduce the perceptual outcome of traits related to capability, and have no significant effect on trustworthiness, attractiveness, responsibility, confidence, and tenacity.

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Face masks affect emotion categorisation, age estimation, recognition, and gender classification from faces

“…More interestingly, for male faces, female participants recognised masked and unmasked equally well; for female faces, regardless of participant gender, were evaluated more poorly when they were masked than unmasked, suggesting that the bottom face halves could be more informative for estimating age of a female than a male. We did not expect these findings, but when considering evidence that the jaw, chin, and zygoma (cheekbone) are collectively crucial for the perception of facial femininity (Li et al, 2021 ; Mogilski & Welling, 2018 ), it is plausible the presence of face mask restricts the use of these perceptual cues for age estimation. This raises the question of the relative quality of age information used by eyewitnesses in their descriptions when a face was partially covered by a mask.…”

Effects of wearing a transparent face mask on perception of facial expressions

“…Complementary to Marini et al's study, we demonstrated that the reduction in perceived intensity of emotions was also moderated by wearing a transparent mask. The perceived intensity of facial emotions, particularly for happy faces, is critical in judging a person's social aspects (e.g., the person's warmth) in interpersonal situations ( Li et al, 2021 ). Because wearing a surgical mask reduces perceived intensity in both genuine (Duchenne) and social (non-Duchenne) smiles ( Sheldon et al, 2021 ), genuine smiles could be misclassified as social smiles, and social smiles could be viewed as neutral expressions when wearing a surgical mask.…”