The effect of smiling and of head tilting on person perception.
This study investigated the effect of smiling and of head tilting on person perception. Brazilian undergraduates (N = 322) judged a slide of a male or female stimulus person, smiling or not, and with the head tilted or not. The independent variables were (a) subject's gender, (b) stimulus person's gender; (c) head posture (tilted vs. upright), and (d) facial expression (no smile, closed smile, upper smile, or broad smile). The dependent variables were 12 adjective pairs for judging personality traits on a 7-point semantic differential scale. Adding a smile resulted generally in more favorable perceptions of the stimulus persons. Head posture had a weaker effect than smiling. Smiling produced generally positive evaluations, whereas head tilting led to negative evaluations on several traits.
Otta
E
E
Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Lira
B B
BB
Delevati
N M
NM
Cesar
O P
OP
Pires
C S
CS
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006257:Head; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011187:Posture; D012904:Smiling; D014796:Visual Perception