Facial Attractiveness & Expressiveness

1. Facial Attractiveness & Expressiveness

2. Faces • The face is the most important, informative feature of human beings • From the face we can know another’s • sex or gender • race or ethnicity • age • social status • mood or emotion

3. Expressions of emotion • Paul Ekman, an expert on nonverbal communication identifies three six universal expressions • joy • sadness • surprise • fear • disgust/contempt • anger Paralanguage allowed Namibians to discern the emotion of a European English speaker telling a story

4. Universal emotions • Recognition of emotions, based on vocal cues, across and within cultures

5. Don’t jump to conclusions • Facial expressions can convey what emotion a person is feeling but not why the person feels that way. • Focus on the expression, not on the cause of the expression. • “She looks sad” • “The boss seems angry” • “I think he is afraid” • Not • “She’s sad because she failed a test.” • “The boss is mad because I came in late.” • “He’s afraid because he just learned he has cancer”

6. real vs. feigned emotions • Look for micro-momentary expressions • Fleeting facial expressions are leaked before we gain conscious control. • Look for asymmetry • Genuine emotions tend to be symmetrical • The same expression occurs, to the same degree on both sides of the face

7. Real vs. feigned emotions • Look for lengthy displays • Real expressions of emotion have short duration • Expressions lasting 5-10 seconds are more likely to be fake • Look at the verbal/nonverbal sequence • We feel before we think • Genuine expressions of emotion tend to happen before or during speech, not after.

8. Real vs. feigned emotions • A genuine smile • There are 18 distinct types of smiles • A genuine smile involves the whole face • eyes light up • forehead wrinkles • cheek muscles rise • wrinkles around mouth and eyes forced smiles

9. She’s a 10 in personality too! • Men spoke to a woman they could not see for 10 minutes. • Half the males were shown a picture of an “attractive” woman as their conversation partner. • Half were shown a photo of an “unattractive” woman instead. • Following their conversations, the men rated the woman’s personality. • The men who thought they were talking to an “attractive” woman rated her personality much more highly. • (the same woman actually spoke to all the men in the experiment)

10. A double standard for attractiveness? • Older male news anchors • Wolf Blitzer = 62 • Jim Lehrer = 64 • Bill O’Reilly = 61 • Brian Williams = 52 • Older female news anchors • Daine Sawyer = 64 • Katie Couric = 54

11. Booze and attractiveness • Last call • Alcohol consumption increases the perceived attractiveness of opposite-sex faces (Neave, Tsang, & Heather, 2008).