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In Emotions

The bigger the eyes, the cuter people are. Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 5 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Eye size affects cuteness in different facial expressions and ages”, by Yao, L.; Dai, Q.; Wu, Q.; Liu, Y.; Yu, Y.; Guo, T.; Zhou, M.; Yang, J.; Takahashi, S.; Ejima, Y. and Wu, J. (2022), in which authors carry out two experiments to investigate how the size of the eyes affects the perception of tenderness. 

The face is a special visual stimulus, with which we are familiar, and which is capable of transmitting emotional information to others, such as tenderness and beauty.

Tenderness is a positive stimulus that is often elicited by looking at human babies or young animals. And this may be related to the fact that the raison d’être of tenderness is the search for empathy and compassion from the observers, because human and animal babies need more care at their early age. This is consistent with the findings of some studies, which have shown that the perception of cuteness we have when we see children, declines as they grow older and become more autonomous and independent.

Lorenz described, around the 1940s, the existence of a “baby schema”, which would be an innate mechanism to generate care behaviors, and would be made up of a set of infantile features, such as a large head and eyes, cheeks and plump body shape, small nose and mouth, and short, stubby limbs. These characteristics would put the mechanism into operation, considering the children who possess them cuter, and attracting the attention and care of adults.

Another study added that the cuteness elicited by the “baby schema” was not just limited to babies, but also adults who possess these traits are also considered cuter.

But, speaking about the whole face, what is the feature that usually attracts our attention? The eyes, indeed. They are a tremendously important facial feature. Emery argued that the eyes contain the most important information about a person’s identity and his/her emotional state.

In a 2014 study cited in the article, photographs of baby faces were divided into three zones: eyes, nose, and mouth. The number of fixations and the duration of fixations were measured, and the results showed that the observers focused longer and more frequently on the eyes.

In addition, other studies have shown that the first thing babies look at when they see people is the eyes, which helps them recognize faces.

This aroused the interest of the authors and, in this article, they decided to investigate whether the size of the eyes influences the level of tenderness that one person arouses in another.

To do this, two experiments were carried out, in which a total of 24 university students participated. 229 photographs were shown to them, previously configured in gray scale.

In them, appeared, on the one hand, faces of adults between 20 and 30 years old, with three different expressions: positive (smiling), neutral and negative (sad). On the other hand, the same type of images were observed, divided into positive, neutral and negative, of the faces of babies between 4 months and 1 year. In addition, both adults and babies had their eyes modified so that within each category (positive, neutral, or negative expression), there were three variations: small, medium, and large eyes.

That is, for the photographs of adults, the subjects found: faces with positive expression and small eyes, faces with positive expression and medium eyes, faces with positive expression and large eyes, and so on with the rest of the expressions.

In the first of the experiments, the subjects had to make a comparison between the faces of the adults with the difference in the size of the eyes, and after that they had to say which one was more pleasant or caused them more tenderness. They did the same with the photographs of the babies’ faces.

In the second experiment, they compared the photos of the adults with the photos of the babies and rated the cuteness.

The main finding of the study is that, in both adults and babies, the size of the eyes has a significant effect on cuteness, in all three types of expressions. The bigger, the cuter.

In the comparison between adults, it was shown that only by changing the size of the eyes, the perception of tenderness changes. That is, an adult with larger eyes seems to be cuter than an adult with medium or small eyes.

However, the results seemed to indicate that the change in cuteness caused by eye size did not make adults cuter than babies.

As indicated before, tenderness is a protection mechanism for babies and children to attract attention and care, so this last idea makes sense if we bear in mind this information. 

We have also mentioned that in other studies it was seen that the eyes are the part of the face to which we pay the most attention. So, it seems logical that when the size of these increases, so does the attention of the observer.

Authors point out that it would be interesting to continue advancing in the research on this topic, to solve some of the limitations of these experiments, such as the small number of participating subjects.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Healthcare

Is the doctors’ communication training inadequate? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Communication training is inadequate: the role of deception, non-verbal communication and cultural proficiency” by Baugh, A. D.; Vanderbilt, A. A. and Baugh, R. F. (2020), in which authors explain why they consider is necessary to improve the communicative training in the context of medicine. 

This week’s paper starts from the next question: are we training our doctors well, so that communication is effective with all types of patients?

Health systems in all societies have an interest in improving the ability of their physicians to provide competent care to all users of the system, regardless of their culture.

The United Nations has recognized that the inequalities faced by marginalized populations must be addressed, and also has placed the issue on its agenda.

More than 20% of displaced or marginalized people say they have given up seeking medical care at all, due to difficulties they found along the way and previous bad experiences too, demonstrating the importance of culturally sensitive care. In addition, they identified racism as one of the main causes of dissatisfaction.

What the authors argue, considering all these ideas, is that communication failures underlie these problems, and are rooted in the changing and heterogeneous demographics of today’s culture, but also attitudes of clinicians. Moreover, they consider that effective intercultural communication stems from an awareness of cultural differences and a genuine desire to communicate actively and correctly.

For this, it is important to bear in mind that socialization during childhood imparts values ​​and social tendencies that take root in us and guide our behavior in life, despite education, subsequent experiences, etc.

Medical students often lack intercultural exposure, due to the tendency toward residential, economic, and cultural self-segregation. In the absence of this, the tendency to privilege one’s own predominates and a negative effect on intercultural attitudes is presaged when exposed to diversity. And rising inequality will only make matters worse.

Communication, a fundamental pillar of human social interaction, and therefore also for the practice of medicine, requires the alignment and synchronization of the speaker and the listener.

Effective communication between two people requires the overlapping of verbal and non-verbal cues, which can sometimes be culturally specific.

Healthcare must aspire to something bigger: the creation of a shared reality between doctor and patient.

Cultural influences arise as a result of many factors: ethnic origin, religion, age, socioeconomic status, or educational level among others.

Both the aspiration of achieving a shared reality, as well as the complexities inherent in the practice of medicine and cultural influences, make relying solely on verbal or non-verbal signals an unsuccessful strategy, because both are necessary.

For example, due to most nonverbal communication being unconscious, signals that may not be appropriate can be used by default, consequently frustrating attempts to improve communication.

There is also the point that damage to doctor-patient relationships is also related to the patient’s ability to perceive dishonest communication.

Incongruous non-verbal behavior or communication is what underlies most lie detection. For example, there are detectable differences based on the activation or not of certain muscles of the face to know if a smile is fake or genuine (the so-called “Duchenne smile”).

Patients notice physicians’ nonverbal inconsistencies and may understand them as signs of dishonesty.

In addition, medical encounters represent tense or risky situations, which make the detection of insincerity more likely.

Students have been found to acquire cultural fluency more slowly when done in small doses, for example, in medical encounters; while the opposite happens if they spend time immersed in a different culture. Furthermore, the greater and more extensive the previous exposure and interaction with another culture, the less unconscious biases there will be.

There are some schools that offer medical language courses, recognizing the relationship between language and culture, however, they have limited accessibility and it would be very positive to facilitate it more.

Medical schools should be trained to redesign communication training so that students are more aware of these weaknesses and how to change them.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog. 

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In Emotions

Being optimistic affects our facial expression of pain? Nonverbal Communication Club

By 5 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Club, this week we present the paper “The effect of optimism on the facial expression of pain: Implications for pain communication” by Basten- Günther, J.; Kunz, M.; Peters, M. and Lautenbacher, S. (2021), in which authors carry out an experiment to know wether optimism affects the facial expression of pain, and if it does, how it happens. 

Optimism is usually defined as the positive expectations we may have about the future. It has been shown to have numerous positive health-related effects, for example in treating diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular problems.

There are also many studies that explore the idea that optimism helps with pain. However, there are no consistent results. There are indications about that optimism leads to “catastrophize” less when pain is felt, which, in turn, may reduce pain reporting.

Since optimism apparently has health benefits, many experts have investigated how to induce it. One of the proposed techniques would be “The best possible self” (BPS for its acronym). It consists of imagining and writing about a future in which everything is going well for oneself. There are several studies that show that this technique has been successful.

However, one of the aspects that we find most interesting, like the authors, is to study facial reactions during pain and see if they vary when optimism comes into play.

The idea that optimism affects the facial expression of pain has to do with the fact that numerous studies have revealed that facial reactions to the latter can be influenced by cognitive and affective factors, such as fear.

They also vary with social context. For example, the socio-evolutionary function of the facial expression of pain is to warn another person, ask for help or compassion. This data can be related to optimism because it has been associated with searching for social support. Consequently, the facial expression of pain could be influenced by optimism.

How? There can be two opposite effects. The first is that the facial expression of pain could be weakened after the induction of the state of optimism, as a consequence of a decrease in the experience of pain. On the other hand, since optimism is also associated with greater confidence in the social environment, causing people to express their weakness and ask for help, optimism could lead to greater facial expressiveness of pain.

Therefore, the objective of this study is to decide which of the two effects prevails.

In order to do this, a total of 40 people were recruited, all of them healthy and without pain. They were asked not to take alcohol, pain relievers, or any psychotropic drug that could ease an experience of pain. They were given a monetary reward at the end of the experiment.

People were divided into two groups: one of them would be manipulated into optimism and the other would be the control group.

The participants underwent thermal stimulation to the arm, which would cause a level of pain sufficient to be noticeable but not excessively uncomfortable. Their facial activity and heart rate were recorded and, in addition, self-reports were made.

The group that was subjected to a manipulation for the induction of optimism, did the exercise of the BPS technique, where they wrote about their future life imagining everything turns out well, just as they want. The other group had to write about a typical day in their life.

The participants’ faces were recorded during heat stimulation. To avoid the effects of social desirability on facial expressions, participants were told that the main focus of interest was heart rate measurement. They were also told not to speak during heat stimulation.

Facial expressions were coded from video recordings, using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) by Ekman and Friesen, which, as we already know, is based on an anatomical analysis of facial movements and distinguishes a series of action units produced by the muscles of the face.

The obtained results showed that optimism does affect the facial expression of pain. How? Releasing the brake that normally holds this expression. Authors found that changes in facial responses to pain depend on the presence of other people. Facial responses were significantly stronger in the presence of people with whom we have an intimate relationship, such as our partner, compared to the conditions in which the directors of the experiment were present.

Optimism, thus, can lead to a greater communicative openness as expectations about the present social context become more positive. If one is in a state of optimism, he/she may be inclined to expect empathy and help from others, rather than rejection, and thus, be more willing to show one’s pain through facial responses.

A finding authors point out is that the increase in facial expression of pain as a consequence of induced optimism was observed mainly in two action units of the FACS: AU4 (frown) and AU6 and 7 (squinted eyes).

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog. 

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In Perception

How distrust and fake cues of deception contribute for us to make inexact judgements in lie detection. Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 5 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “The Limits of Conscious
Deception Detection: When Reliance on False Deception Cues Contributes to Inaccurate Judgements”,
by Stel, M.; Schwarz, A.; van Dijk, E. and van Knippenberg, A. (2020),in which authors explore the ideas
of unconscious thought, fake cues of deception and people’s ability to detect lies.

We have already seen in several articles how the ability to deception detection, in addition to being one of the most interesting fields in the study of non-verbal language, is an extremely important and practical skill in everyday life.

However, it is important to remember that most studies show that the level of this ability does not usually exceed the level of probability.

One of the arguments used to explain this is that people have a tendency to believe in the information that is presented to them. This is called the truth bias or the “default value of truth.” Since most communications are honest most of the time, the benefits of believing are higher than the costs of the occasional deception. Therefore, it is understood that people can detect truths with greater precision than lies.

So, if overconfidence gets in the way of a successful deception detection, wouldn’t mistrust be an antidote to it?

In this article, authors investigate whether people’s ability to detect deception varies depending on whether or not they feel mistrust.

Previous research shows that increasing suspicion would decrease truth bias. However, studies about the effects of suspicion on the accuracy of deception detection offer mixed results: some are positive and others negative.

But only a few studies on deception detection focused on the effects of mistrust instead of suspicion. They are similar concepts, but different. In a state of suspicion, the perceivers are not sure of the motivations of the others; while in a state of mistrust, negative expectations about these motivations are added. As a result, suspicious perceivers are more willing to seek information to determine whether or not someone else’s motivations are honest. On the other hand, mistrust affects the perceiver’s need to face a possibly threatening situation. By having different effects, they are likely to affect deception detection abilities differently as well.

According to some experts, distrust indicates that the environment is not the usual and, as a result, people avoid routine strategies, and examine deeply more people’s behavior. This encourages deliberate conscious processing, whereas when we have signals that a situation is safe, less effort cognitive processing is encouraged.

In other words, it is suggested that a state of mistrust would promote the conscious processing of information, while a state of trust would promote intuitive or unconscious processing. Decisions for both thought forms have differences: for unconscious thinking decisions, attention is directed elsewhere before making them; for conscious or automatic decisions, the decision is made immediately. All this makes these ideas attractive to authors and they decide to explore them.

Other findings suggest that conscious processes may hamper the ability to detect deception. Judging whether a person is truthful or deceiving us, can be a complex decision to make. First, we evaluate the signals, such as the level of detail, the plausibility of the story …, and this is cognitively demanding. Second, we must process verbal and nonverbal content, and pay attention to different types of observable cues. Because judging whether a person is telling the truth or not is a demanding process, the theory of unconscious thought suggests that the detection of deception can be better handled with it, since it is assumed that the unconscious thought would have more processing power.

Research focused directly on conscious and unconscious thinking showed that people’s ability to detect deception increased when they were prevented from consciously deliberating on the information presented.

For the experiment carried out, authors used covert manipulation, causing observers to adopt facial expressions of distrust (narrowed eyes) or confidence (wide eyes). The aim was to induce these states of mind, based on previous studies.

A total of 93 university students participated and watched eight video clips showing a person lying or telling the truth. The participants were then asked how much they trusted this person, requiring a score on a scale to measure this aspect.

A second study was conducted that investigated whether confidence in the use of false indicators of deception influenced mistrust in detection. 54 people participated in it. The experiment was similar to the first one, but the participants had to explain why they trusted or mistrusted the people in the videos.

Although increasing mistrust was expected to reduce the truth bias, the results did not show that distrustful people were less likely to mistake a lie for a truth. On the contrary, it happened that mistrust led the participants to confuse truths with lies.

That is, mistrust led participants to misjudge those who told the truth as liars. Furthermore, with study 2, it was shown that distrustful people relied more on false beliefs about lying when judging truth-tellers than when judging liars.

Although the existence or not of benefits in unconscious deception judgments was finally not directly proven, authors showed that contextually induced modes of thought affect the ability to detect deception, when confidence or mistrust was induced in the subjects.

One limitation is that the sample in Study 2 is quite small, and as such, the results should be interpreted with caution.

In conclusion, authors showed that contextual mistrust difficulties people’s ability to detect deception, especially for those who tell the truth, who are often judged as liars.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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In Non-verbal communication

Sorry, not sorry: the nonverbal language of genuine apologies and fake apologies. Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Sorry, not sorry: Effects of Different Types of Apologies and Self-Monitoring on Non-verbal Behaviors” by Yamamoto, K.; Kimura, M. y Osaka, M. (2021), in which authors carry out a laboratory experiment to see the differences between true apologies and fake apologies.

One of the topics studied with more interest within nonverbal language is deception detection. Inside this, which is very complex and extensive, we find apologies: is there a way to know when they are genuine and when they are false?

What we know for sure is that apologies serve the important social function of facilitating interpersonal forgiveness. However, they are not always effective. Whether or not you resolve the conflict generally depends on the perception of the apology: is it trustworthy, genuine, and sincere? Then, surely, it will be successfully accepted.

We can divide the apology into two types: on the one hand, we have the sincere apology, made from the heart, which requires feeling guilt, recognition and acceptance of responsibility; on the other hand, we have the instrumental apology, made with a purpose, such as avoiding punishment or rejection, without acknowledging guilt or accepting responsibility.

The latter do not resolve conflicts because the reasons of them are repeated over and over again when there is no acceptance of responsibility or awareness of guilt. However, these apologies can be helpful when it comes to simply appeasing the emotions of others, as may be the case with seller/server-customer relationships.

Regarding nonverbal behavior in apologies, several studies have shown that nonverbal displays of sadness and/or remorse facilitate the positive effects of apology more than smiling. Furthermore, they also reduce the negative feelings of the aggrieved part.

There is a social belief that looking away is a reliable indicator of deception but appears that the opposite is true. Experts have shown that people who lie make more eye contact than those who tell the truth, because they have the intention of appearing convincing. Taking this into account, and also the fact that the feeling of guilt typical of a genuine apology is related to the aversion of the gaze, authors consider that in instrumental apologies there will be greater eye contact.

On the other hand, authors investigate self-control. Individuals with a high level of self-control are more concerned with the adequacy of their social behavior according to the context in which they find themselves, so they are more likely to adapt their behavior according to the situation. In other words, it is logical to think that these people would find it easier to adjust their facial expression to simulate a genuine apology.

Authors conducted an experiment to explore all these questions. In it, they gathered a total of 53 people, assigning 27 of them to the condition of sincere apology and 26 to the condition of instrumental apology.

Participants were instructed to watch a video where a waiter offered a glass of water to a customer: it was spilled on the customer, making him angry. For those participants assigned to sincere apology status, it was the waiter’s fault. For those participants assigned to instrumental apology status, it was the client’s fault. Both types of participants were asked to represent an apology.

The first hypothesis that authors propose was that the aversion to the gaze was more likely to occur in a sincere apology than in an instrumental apology. In this regard, the results suggest that a person with high self-control tries to convey a sincere apology by maintaining greater eye contact, whether we are talking about a genuine apology or an instrumental apology.

On the other hand, authors hypothesized that instrumental apologies would facilitate longer lasting facial expressions than sincere apologies. This was one of the main ideas because numerous experts have shown that fake facial expressions last longer than those that are sincere.

Supporting this hypothesis, the results show a longer duration of expressions in the upper half of the face in instrumental apologies than in sincere apologies.

In a nutshell, people with high self-control and good public performance tried to convey an apology to the client by combining increased eye contact and facial displays of remorse, even though they did not feel guilty.

There are some limitations of the study, for example, the nonverbal behavior obtained in a role-playing game can be different from the spontaneous expression.

In addition to continuing to investigate this dynamic, authors recommend delving into issues such as how the burden of an instrumental apology affects the person who apologizes.

They also consider that the findings of this study are important to improve the relationship between salespeople or servers and customers, and also interpersonal relationships in general.

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In Human Resources

Influence of interviewer’s nonverbal behavior in the perception of the applicant’s skills in selection processes. Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 4 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Nonverbal behavior of interviewers influences the competence ratings of observers in recruitment interviews: a study investigating social influence using 360-degree videos with virtual reality and 2D screen displays”, by Wyssenbach, T.; Zeballos, M.; Loosli, S. and Schwaninger, A. (2020), in which authors study, using virtual reality and 2D videos, whether the interviewer’s nonverbal behavior affects the observer’s perception about the applicant’s skills in selection processes within the world of work.

 Nowadays, interviews continue to be the most widely used method in employee selection processes.

In a survey carried out among the human resources staff of companies in Switzerland, it was revealed that 99% of the subjects included some type of interview to select personnel, and a 71% of them were semi-structured interviews.

In them, interviewers must judge the applicant’s competencies as objectively as possible, being guided by his/her curriculum but, increasingly, by what each candidate transmits.

An essential part of human communication and interaction is nonverbal, we already know that. Nonverbal behavior has a huge social influence, affecting our attitudes and beliefs.

That is why authors wonder how the nonverbal behavior of the interviewer would influence the perception that a third, an observer, would have of the candidate’s abilities.

Until now, this has never been studied, although efforts have been dedicated to investigate how nonverbal behavior influences those who apply for a job.

We know that there are nonverbal signals that we can classify as positive or negative, depending on whether they convey something good or bad to us.

Positive signs could be looking into the eyes, nodding to agree, or smiling. While negative signals would be frowning, pursing the lips, or staring. Although we must add that they depend a lot on the context.

To carry out their experiment, authors study these negative and positive cues. How?

A total of 110 participants were divided into four groups to watch a video of a job interview.

On one hand, those who would see the scene with positive body language through virtual reality, and those who would see the interview with negative body language using the same method.

On the other hand, there was a group that would see a video of an interview with positive signals in two dimensions and another, using the same system, would watch a video with negative nonverbal signals.

This distinction between virtual reality and two dimensions was made to find out which one facilitates immersion the most, if there is a real difference between them.

Participants had to evaluate three skills of the candidates: behavior in a team, customer care and sales skill.

The results obtained were in line with the expectations.

Participants, acting as observers of the interview, rated behavior in a team and customer care skills higher when the interviewer reacted with positive body language to the candidate’s responses, while the opposite occurred when observed body language was negative.

No significant difference was observed regarding the observer’s perception of the sales skill of the candidate based on whether the interviewer’s non-verbal language was positive or negative.

One possible explanation for this may be that participants felt more competent or demanding when rating this skill.

These results confirm the bias of social influence and, therefore, authors recommend training and practice in this area. In particular, because selection processes in which there are more than one interviewer are becoming more and more popular.

This training would be beneficial because it would increase the awareness that social influence goes hand in hand with nonverbal behavior and, that really, this is an element that influences our behavior and our perceptions.

Regarding the use of virtual reality versus two-dimensional videos, no significant differences were observed in terms of the immersion of the participants in the study.

Like any research, this one has limitations. One of those that authors point out is that the information collected only examines the perception of three skills judged in semi-structured interviews.

It would be interesting to increase the range of the capacities mentioned and also add descriptive questions about the nonverbal language that participants are observing.

In this way, conclusions, surely interesting and useful, would be reached about other competencies that also have social influence, especially at work.

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NonVerbal Communication Blog