Faces and places: how context influences the social effects of smiles

Thesis

Facial expressions are salient sources of social information. Of all the facial expressions, smiles are perhaps the most important because they occur frequently and have strong but subtle effects on the behaviour of interaction partners. By distinguishing between their social effects, researchers have identified different types of smiles associated with specific patterns of facial muscle activity (i.e. morphology). Nonetheless, a smile’s meaning is also affected by the situational context that the smiler is seen within. In the present thesis, I investigated how these morphological and contextual cues combine to impact the social effects of smiles. To begin, in Chapter 2 I assessed how contextual cues affected explicit social evaluations of smiles, as well as how different smile types affected explicit evaluations of situational contexts. This was tested using both rating scales and an economic trust game. I found that context significantly affected explicit social evaluations of smiles. Moreover, explicit evaluations of situational contexts were significantly influenced by the smile type that accompanied them. Next, in Chapter 3 I investigated the psychological mechanisms underlying the integration of smiles with their accompanying situational context by recording both the eye gaze and response time of participants as they rated face-in-context stimuli. I concluded that the integration of smiles and contexts likely depends mostly upon a process of conscious cognitive reinterpretation, if enough time is available for this type of processing. In Chapter 4, I tested the extent to which morphological and contextual information implicitly affected participant’s approach-avoidance response speed using a mobile approach-avoidance app. Both morphological and contextual information implicitly affected the speed of subsequent approach-avoidance movements. However, the automatic integration of contextual information depended upon the ambiguity or “source clarity” of the information available. Finally, in Chapter 5 I determined whether the effects of context and smile type could be generalised to more realistic social interaction scenarios. Using virtual reality and electromyography, I measured the extent to which smiles displayed by virtual avatars were mimicked by participants. My results demonstrated that both smile type and situational context influenced subsequent mimicry within more embedded and embodied social interactions. Taken together, this thesis demonstrates the power and importance of situational context in expression processing. Context can influence the social effects of expressions both implicitly at an early unconscious stage and explicitly at a later conscious stage. However, its influence depends on the ambiguity of the different expressions and different contexts, as well as the demands of the social task.

Authors: Day, S

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-kz7oywnen
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: implicit; approach-avoidance; facial expressions; smiles; mimicry; eye tracking; context; faces; social interaction
• Subjects: Psychology, Experimental