title: You may look unhappy unless you smile: the distinctiveness of a smiling face against faces without an explicit smile.
abstract: An expressionless face is often perceived as rude whereas a smiling face is considered as hospitable. Repetitive exposure to such perceptions may have developed stereotype of categorizing an expressionless face as expressing negative emotion. To test this idea, we displayed a search array where the target was an expressionless face and the distractors were either smiling or frowning faces. We manipulated set size. Search reaction times were delayed with frowning distractors. Delays became more evident as the set size increased. We also devised a short-term comparison task where participants compared two sequential sets of expressionless, smiling, and frowning faces. Detection of an expression change across the sets was highly inaccurate when the change was made between frowning and expressionless face. These results indicate that subjects were confused with expressed emotions on frowning and expressionless faces, suggesting that it is difficult to distinguish expressionless face from frowning faces.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Hyung-Bum
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Ji-Eun
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: jshyun@cau.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Joo-Seok
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Hyun
mesh_terms: D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D012904:Smiling; D012938:Social Perception
keywords: Emotion categorization; Expressionless face; Facial expression