| Summary: | This thesis describes a program of research designed to investigate the sensitivity of
perceivers to the ontological distinctions between simulated expressions of happiness
unrelated to positive emotional experience, or, posed smiles, and spontaneous,
veridical expressions of positive affect, or, genuine smiles. Importantly, this research
was conducted from within the theoretical framework of Gibsonian ecological
psychology, an alternative approach to the information processing theories that
dominate contemporary psychological theorising.
Four experiments were conducted that employed an original set of ecologically valid
facial displays generated specifically for the present research. In Experiments I a and
1 b, it was demonstrated that when jUdging from either photographs or video,
participants could determine whether a smile reflected a positive emotional
experience or not. Furthermore, for both of these studies, participants exhibited a bias
toward misidentifying posed smiles that expose the teeth as genuine smiles.
Experiment 2 also revealed findings consistent with the notion that perceivers are
sensitive to the meaningful differences between posed and genuine smiles. In this
study, participants were required to judge the valence of a series of target words, each
of which was preceded by a briefly presented facial expression (i.e. a prime). The
results of this study indicated that the identification of positive words was facilitated
when preceded by a genuine smile, but not a posed smile. Experiment 3 was
conducted to further investigate how such sensitivity may be manifest in regard to
guiding effective social interaction. PartiCipants were required to play several rounds
of the Prisoners' Dilemma game with partners (actually video recordings) exhibiting
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either posed or genuine smiles. The results of this experiment indicated that genuine
smiles facilitated cooperative interaction, but posed smiles did not.
The results of all four experiments are discussed in terms of the functionality provided
by accurate social perception with regard to the acquisition of information specifying
the emotional state, and more broadly, the dispositional properties of conspecifics.
Finally, these results will be considered in terms of the ecological conceptualisation of
psychological activity, with an emphasis on the social affordances specified by posed
and genuine smiles respectively.
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