When people are being evaluated, their whole body responds. Verbal feedback causes robust activation in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. What about nonverbal evaluative feedback? Recent discoveries about the social functions of facial expression have documented three morphologically distinct smiles, which serve the functions of reinforcement, social smoothing, and social challenge. Jared Martin is the first author on the latest paper from our lab, published in Nature Scientific Reports.
Hot off the press in Psych Science: social functional smiles
Our latest empirical article uses a data-driven approach to build prototypical models of smiles that accomplish distinct social tasks: rewarding the self and others (reward), conveying non-threat and maintaining bonds (affiliation), and negotiating social status (dominance). Magdalena Rychlowska, the first author, is a former graduate student of the Niedenthal Emotions Lab and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University Belfast, working with Will Curran and Gary McKeown. Co-authors Rachael Jack, Philippe Schyns, and Oliver Garrod (University of Glasgow) contributed their reverse-correlation approach for synthesizing models of facial expressions using perceiver responses.
Check out the article in Psychological Science here and the press release here.
Select popular press coverage:
The facial action units that emerged as indicative of reward, affiliation, and dominance, based on perceiver ratings.