Social psychology

Here Is What Makes A Smile Instantly Likeable

The surprising pattern behind the expressions people respond to most positively.

When it comes to a successful smile, less is more.

The most effective, successful and pleasant smile doesn’t show too many teeth.

It is a medium- or low-wattage smile.

Certainly, it is not true that the bigger the smile, the better it is, as the study’s authors explain:

“…the optimal window (or sweet spot) of smile extent contradicts the principle that “more is always better” with respect to smile extent.”

The image below shows some of the different types of smiles they tested.

The smiles surrounded by the most green were rated the most successful.

You can see that smiles 13, 14 and 10 are surrounded by the most green, indicating that they were rated the most successful.

All three of the highest-rated smiles are relatively restrained rather than broad.

Showing too many teeth can even cause the facial expression to send a message you might not intend:

“…forming open-mouth smiles with small angles/extents can produce unintended perceptions of the expression, e.g., contempt or fear instead of happiness.”

Here, for those of you of a technical bent, are the exact scientific characteristics of a successful smile:

“…we found that a successful smile consists of (i) an optimal window of mouth angle and smile extent, (ii) the correct amount of dental show for the given angle-extent combination, and (iii) dynamic symmetry such that the left and right sides of the mouth are temporally synced within 125 ms.”

Now it’s time to head to the mirror and put the findings into practice!

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The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Helwig et al., 2017).

Why People Who Can’t Understand Words Are Better At Spotting Lies

The words that liars use only seem to distract observers from the truth.

People are better at detecting lies by ignoring the words and unconsciously judging facial expressions and tone of voice.

The words that liars use only seem to distract from the truth.

The conclusion comes from a study of people with aphasia — an inability to understand language, often caused by brain damage.

The research showed that people with aphasia are better at spotting lies than those whose language skills are intact.

Dr Nancy Etcoff, who led the study, said:

“As far back as the 1920s there are anecdotal reports of patients with aphasia being able to detect when people were lying.

In the popular book The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Dr. Oliver Sacks describes a group of patients watching a politician on television and laughing at what they perceived to be his deceptive statements.”

Aphasic advantage

For the study, people were recorded while describing a scene they were looking at.

Sometimes they viewed a pleasant scene and described it truthfully; other times they viewed an unpleasant scene and told lies.

People with healthy brains performed very poorly, detecting lies only 50 percent of the time.

In other words, performance was no better than chance — like flipping a coin.

The aphasics, though, correctly identified the lies 73 percent of the time.

Dr Etcoff said:

“One question that may arise when considering these results is whether the patients with aphasia were better at detecting lies or at detecting emotional states.

Previous studies have not shown aphasics to be any better than people without brain damage in perceiving simple emotions – such as happiness or sadness.

In fact, because of their aphasia, these patients had impaired ability to understand what the volunteers were actually saying.

What they do seem to be more sensitive to are nuances in facial expression that reveal a disconnect between what someone is trying to express and what they really are feeling.”

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The study was published in the journal Nature (Etcoff et al., 2000).

This Posture Doubles Dating Success Online And Face-To-Face

The posture that makes both sexes look more attractive.

Both men and women look more attractive when they adopt an expansive posture.

Expansive postures include holding the arms outward rather than folded, leaning backwards and keeping the legs apart rather than crossed.

Expansive gestures tend to signal openness and dominance, helping make people appear more attractive.

Dr Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk, the study’s first author, said:

“We have seen it within the animal world, that taking on extra space and maximizing presence inside a physical space can be used as signal for attracting a mate.

By applying dominance they are attempting to signal to some potential mate ‘I can do things, I’ve got a space within this hierarchy, I get access to sources.'”

The researchers recorded a speed dating event and used data from the dating app Tinder to verify their hypothesis.

In both cases, people were more likely to be chosen when they adopted more expansive postures.

The authors write in the paper:

“These findings indicate that in modern-day dating contexts, in which initial attraction often is determined by a rapid decision following a brief interaction or seeing a photograph, displays of expansive posture increase one’s chances of initial romantic success.”

The Tinder part of the study is particularly convincing because the researchers created two different profiles for the same person.

In one profile, they were adopting a hunched posture with folded arms.

In the other, they had a more expansive posture: for example, leaning back or with arms outward.

The authors write:

“In a dating world in which success sometimes is determined by a split-second decision rendered after a brief interaction or exposure to a static photograph, single persons have very little time to make a good impression.

Our research suggests that a nonverbal dominance display increases a person’s chances of being selected as a potential mate.

Expansiveness makes the dating candidate appear more dominant.”

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The study was published in the journal PNAS (Vacharkulksemsuk et al., 2016).

When Your Name Matches Your Face It’s More Attractive

People prefer it when your name matches your face.

People tend to prefer names and faces that seem to go naturally together.

Names that have a round sound, requiring rounding of the mouth, like “Lou”, go better with round faces.

Angular-sounding names, such as “Peter”, tend to suit more angular faces.

Psychologists tested this by having people look at pairs of names and faces.

Sometimes the names matched the faces (round name, round face) and sometimes not (round name, angular face).

They found that people prefer it when names and faces matches.

The researchers then took the idea a step further.

Perhaps people would be more likely to vote for political candidates whose names matched their faces?

Mr David Barton, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“Those with congruent names earned a greater proportion of votes than those with incongruent names.

The fact that candidates with extremely well-fitting names won their seats by a larger margin — 10 points — than is obtained in most American presidential races suggests the provocative idea that the relation between perceptual and bodily experience could be a potent source of bias in some circumstances.”

The “bouba/kiki effect”

The finding is an extension of what psychologists call the “bouba/kiki effect”

To demonstrate this, people are shown the following images and asked which one might be called “bouba” and which one “kiki”.

Over 95 percent of people call the image on the left “kiki” and the image on the right “bouba”.

A spiky name fits a spiky object, while a smooth name fits a smooth one

It’s not just English speakers who do this; one study found that Tamil speakers in India showed the same pattern.

Professor Jamin Halberstadt, who co-authored the study, said:

“Overall, our results tell a consistent story.

People’s names, like shape names, are not entirely arbitrary labels.

Face shapes produce expectations about the names that should denote them, and violations of those expectations carry affective implications, which in turn feed into more complex social judgments, including voting decisions.”