Slow Onset Smile Are Best
Christopher Philip
Research led by Eva Krumhuber School of Psychology, Cardiff University, has found that a smile that happens slowly or a ‘slow onset smile’ produced more positive feelings in others.
The experiment was simple in that it had male and female raters judge computer generated male and female characters on various dimensions.
Some of the faces were shown to smile in just over 0.1 second (fast onset) whereas others smiled over a more extended period of time consisting of 0.5 seconds (slow onset). Additionally, some of the characters where shown with heads titled to the side while others had heads facing forward.
Results showed that slow onset smiles were rated as less fake and more flirtatious than short onset smiles. Overall, however, smiles displayed by women, regardless of their onset were rated to be more fake whereas participants judged men’s smiles to be more flirtatious than women’s smiles. The authors suggest that this is due to the fact that women tend to smile more overall, thus diminishing the signal’s strength. However, as men smile less overall, when they do smile, it carries more meaning.
Head titling during smiles also moderated feelings of trustworthiness and flirtatiousness attributes suggesting that it functions to affect authenticity of smiles. Overall, the researchers found that long-onset smiles were rated as more attractive, more trustworthy and less dominant. Head titling was most positive if the head was titled toward a partner coupled with eyes oriented in the same way.
Image Credit: Jai Kapoor
Resources
Krumhuber, E., Manstead, A., & Kappas, A. Temporal Aspects of Facial Displays in Person and Expression Perception: The Effects of Smile Dynamics, Head-tilt, and Gender. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. 2007. 31(1), 39-56.