Sociality of solitary smiling: Potentiation by an implicit audience.

Abstract

Ss viewed a pleasant videotape either: (a) alone, (b) alone but with the belief that a friend nearby was otherwise engaged, (c) alone but with the belief that a friend was viewing the same videotape in another room, or (d) when a friend was present. S'ssmiling, as estimated by facial electromyography, varied monotonically with the sociality of viewing but not with reported emotion. The findings confirm audience effects for human smiles, demonstrate that the effects do not depend upon the presence of the interactant, and indicate that the smiles are better predicted by social context than by emotion. Both naive and expert independent raters given descriptions of the study made predictions that conformed to previous emotion-based accounts of faces but departed from the findings. The results suggest that some solitary faces may be implicitly social, a view consistent with both contemporary ethology, and role and impression-management theories of behavior. People make faces when they are alone. This curious fact may have been crucial in shaping the most popular contemporary theories of facial expression. These generally hold that whereas some faces reflect social convention, others are quasi-reflexive released displays of felt emotion (Buck, 1984; Darwin, 1872; Ekman, 1972,1973,1977,1984; Ekman & Friesen, 1969,1975,

Cites (83)

1. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
   Naegele, Kaspar D., Goffman, Erving · 1956 · American Sociological Review
2. Thought and language
   Vygotsky, L. S. · 1964 · Bulletin of the Orton Society
3. The expression of the emotions in man and animals.
   Darwin, Charles · 1872 · J. Murray eBooks
4. Facial action coding system
   Ekman, Paul, Friesen, Wallace V. · 2019 · PsycTESTS Dataset
5. Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist
   Mead, George Herbert, Morris, Charles W. · 1967 · University of Chicago Press eBooks
6. Human Nature and the Social Order
   Cooley, Charles Horton · 2017 · Routledge eBooks
7. On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications.
   Orne, Martin T. · 1962 · American Psychologist
8. The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior: Categories, Origins, Usage, and Coding
   EKMAN, PAUL, FRIESEN, WALLACE V. · 1969 · Semiotica
9. The psychology of social impact
   Latané, Bibb · 1981 · American Psychologist
10. Emotion: A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis
    Camras, Linda, Plutchik, Robert · 1980 · The American Journal of Psychology

Show all 83 references

Cited by (44)

1. Looking at pictures: Affective, facial, visceral, and behavioral reactions
   LANG, PETER J., GREENWALD, MARK K., BRADLEY, MARGARET M., HAMM, ALFONS O. · 1993 · Psychophysiology
2. Measures of emotion: A review
   Mauss, Iris B., Robinson, Michael D. · 2009 · Cognition and Emotion
3. Are Emotions Natural Kinds?
   Barrett, Lisa Feldman · 2006 · Perspectives on Psychological Science
4. Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements
   Barrett, Lisa Feldman, Adolphs, Ralph, Marsella, Stacy, Martinez, Aleix M., Pollak, Seth D. · 2019 · Psychological Science in the Public Interest
5. Is there universal recognition of emotion from facial expression? A review of the cross-cultural studies.
   Russell, James A. · 1994 · Psychological Bulletin

See all 567