Smiles as Multipurpose Social Signals
Open accessAbstract
The human smile is highly variable in both its form and the social contexts in which it is displayed. A social-functional account identifies three distinct smile expressions defined in terms of their effects on the perceiver: reward smiles reinforce desired behavior; affiliation smiles invite and maintain social bonds; and dominance smiles manage hierarchical relationships. Mathematical modeling uncovers the appearance of the smiles, and both human and Bayesian classifiers validate these distinctions. New findings link laughter to reward, affiliation, and dominance, and research suggests that these functions of smiles are recognized across cultures. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the smile can be productively investigated according to how it assists the smiler in meeting the challenges and opportunities inherent in human social living.
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Happiness displays can signal affiliative intentions.
“Happiness displays can signal affiliative intentions (Hess et al., 2000; Knutson, 1996; Martin et al., 2017)”
From Existential threat and responses to emotional displays of ingroup and outgroup members (2023) · cites this paper as Martin et al., 2017
The smiles served as signals of affiliation rather than reflections of joy or felt reward.
“Instead, we propose that the smiles served as signals of affiliation rather than reflections of joy or felt reward (Martin et al., 2017; Niedenthal et al., 2010; Rychlowska et al., 2021).”
From Existential threat and responses to emotional displays of ingroup and outgroup members (2023) · cites this paper as Martin et al., 2017
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“Instead, we propose that the smiles served as signals of affiliation rather than reflections of joy or felt reward (Martin et al., 2017; Niedenthal et al., 2010; Rychlowska et al., 2021).”
Background
- Authors
- Martin, J., Rychlowska, M., Wood, A., & Niedenthal, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Queen's University Belfast (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Martin, Jared
- Venue
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-11
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 864-877
- ISSN
- 1364-6613 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2759407370
- Cited by
- 187
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 12
- FWCI
- 2.64
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ (am, 350 d)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-017 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-037 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-012 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-029 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-004 (stm-asf)
- Locations
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Mental Health (T32MH018931-26)
- U.S. − Israeli Binational Science Foundation (2013205)
- National Science Foundation (1355397)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- smiling, social signals, reward, affiliation, dominance, social hierarchy, laughter, facial expressions, Bayesian classifier, social bonding
- MeSH terms
- Culture, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Smiling, Social Behavior
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