People constrain their semantic associations when talking to both friends and strangers.

During conversations, people face a trade-off between establishing understanding and making interesting and unique contributions. How do people balance this when deciding which concepts to reference, and does it matter how well they know their conversation partner? In the present work, participants made stream-of-consciousness word associations either with a partner or alone-simplified versions of dialogue and monologue. Participants made semantically narrower and more predictable word associations with a stranger than alone (Study 1), suggesting that they constrain their associations to establish mutual understanding. Increasing closeness (Study 2) or having a prior relationship (Study 3) did not moderate this effect. Thus, even during a task that does not depend on establishing mutual understanding, people sacrifice being interesting for the sake of being understood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Thinking you're different matters more for belonging than being different.

Belonging to a community is essential for wellbeing, but potentially unattainable for those dissimilar from a group. In the present work, we ask whether belongingness is better predicted by acting and thinking like peers or believing you act and think like peers. Students (N = 1181) reported their belonging and how much they, their friends, and an "average student" endorsed local behavioral norms and general values. We calculated difference scores for behaviors and values capturing perceived similarity to the average, actual similarity to the average, and accuracy around the norm. Key results indicate that perceived behavioral similarity to the average, when controlling for other differences, predicts belonging and most robustly mediates between identity and belonging. Using social network analysis, we find behavioral differences from friends are meaningfully linked to network density and racial homophily. Efficient interventions for enhanced belonging could highlight similarities between students and their peers.

Beyond Nature Versus Nurture: the Emergence of Emotion.

Affective science is stuck in a version of the nature-versus-nurture debate, with theorists arguing whether emotions are evolved adaptations or psychological constructions. We do not see these as mutually exclusive options. Many adaptive behaviors that humans have evolved to be good at, such as walking, emerge during development - not according to a genetically dictated program, but through interactions between the affordances of the body, brain, and environment. We suggest emotions are the same. As developing humans acquire increasingly complex goals and learn optimal strategies for pursuing those goals, they are inevitably pulled to particular brain-body-behavior states that maximize outcomes and self-reinforce via positive feedback loops. We call these recurring, self-organized states emotions. Emotions display many of the hallmark features of self-organized attractor states, such as hysteresis (prior events influence the current state), degeneracy (many configurations of the underlying variables can produce the same global state), and stability. Because most bodily, neural, and environmental affordances are shared by all humans - we all have cardiovascular systems, cerebral cortices, and caregivers who raised us - similar emotion states emerge in all of us. This perspective helps reconcile ideas that, at first glance, seem contradictory, such as emotion universality and neural degeneracy.

Variability in the expression and perception of positive affect in human infancy.

Positive emotions play a critical role in guiding human behavior and social interactions. This study examined whether and how genetic variability in the oxytocin system is linked to individual differences in expressing positive affect in human infants. Our results show that genetic variation in CD38 (rs3796863), previously linked to increased release of oxytocin, was associated with higher rates of positive affective displays among a sample of 7-month-old infants, using established parent-report measures. Moreover, infants displaying increased levels of positive affect (smiling and laughter) also showed enhanced brain responses in the right inferior frontal cortex, a brain region previously linked to perception-action coupling, when viewing others smile at them. These findings suggest that, from early in development, genetic variation in the oxytocin system is associated with individual differences in expressed positive affect, which in turn are linked to differences in perceiving positive affect. This helps uncover the neurobiological processes accounting for variability in the expression and perception of positive affect in infancy.

Social networks are shaped by culturally contingent assessments of social competence.

Cultural outsiders, like immigrants or international students, often struggle to make friends. We propose that one barrier to social connection is not knowing what it means to be socially competent in the host culture. First-year students at a U.S. business school (N = 1328) completed a social network survey and rated their own social competence and that of several peers. International students were rated by peers as less socially competent than U.S. students, especially if they were from nations more culturally dissimilar to the U.S. International students' self-reported competence ratings were uncorrelated with peers' judgments. Social network analysis revealed international students were less central to their peer networks than U.S. students, although this gap was reduced if peers evaluated them as socially competent. Peer-reported competence mediated the effects of international student status on social network centrality. Since learning local norms takes time, we suggest inclusivity will require host communities to define social competence more broadly.

Red and blue states: dichotomized maps mislead and reduce perceived voting influence.

In the United States the color red has come to represent the Republican party, and blue the Democratic party, in maps of voting patterns. Here we test the hypothesis that voting maps dichotomized into red and blue states leads people to overestimate political polarization compared to maps in which states are represented with continuous gradations of color. We also tested whether any polarizing effect is due to partisan semantic associations with red and blue, or if alternative hues produce similar effects. In Study 1, participants estimated the hypothetical voting patterns of eight swing states on maps with dichotomous or continuous red/blue or orange/green color schemes. A continuous gradient mitigated the polarizing effects of red/blue maps on voting predictions. We also found that a novel hue pair, green/orange, decreased perceived polarization. Whether this effect was due to the novelty of the hues or the fact that the hues were not explicitly labeled "Democrat" and "Republican" was unclear. In Study 2, we explicitly assigned green/orange hues to the two parties. Participants viewed electoral maps depicting results from the 2020 presidential election and estimated the voting margins for a subset of states. We replicated the finding that continuous red/blue gradient reduced perceived polarization, but the novel hues did not reduce perceived polarization. Participants also expected their hypothetical vote to matter more when viewing maps with continuous color gradations. We conclude that the dichotomization of electoral maps (not the particular hues) increases perceived voting polarization and reduces a voter's expected influence on election outcomes.

Cultural diversity broadens social networks.

Migration and mobility increase the cultural diversity of a society. Does this diversity have consequences for how people interact and form social ties, even when they join a new community? We hypothesized that people from regions with greater cultural diversity would forge more diversified social ties in a newly formed community, connecting otherwise unconnected groups. In other words, they would become social brokers. We tested this prediction by characterizing the social networks of eight Master of Business Administration cohorts (N = 2,257) at a business school in the U.S. International students (N = 773) from populations with both greater present day ethnic diversity and a history of extensive cultural intermingling were more likely to become social brokers than international students from less diverse nations. Domestic students' (N = 1,461) brokerage scores were also positively related to the ancestral diversity of the U.S. county they identified as "home." The results of this study suggest that more culturally diverse social environments-defined here at multiple geographic and temporal scales-endow people with socially adaptable behaviors that help them connect broadly within new, heterogeneous communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Faces synchronize when communication through spoken language is prevented.

Cooperating with another person requires communicating intentions and coordinating behavior. People often accomplish these tasks using spoken language, but verbal communication is not always available. Here, we test the hypothesis that, to establish successful cooperative interaction, people compensate for the temporary loss of one means, verbal communication, by amplifying another, namely nonverbal expressive synchrony. Fifty-seven female dyads, half of whom were prevented from using spoken language, completed four cooperative tasks, two of which induced expressions of emotion, while their faces were filmed. The no-language dyads displayed more facial-expressive synchrony, quantified using a novel application of multidimensional dynamic time warping. We find that solutions to coordinating interaction solved by spoken language can be compensated for by synchronizing facial expressions. The findings also point to one social force-the lack of shared language-that might, in the long-term, select for cultures of increased nonverbal expressiveness and synchrony. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Tendency to laugh is a stable trait: findings from a round-robin conversation study.

People often laugh during conversation. Who is more responsible for the laughter, the person laughing or their partner for eliciting it? We used a round-robin design where participants (N = 66) engaged in 10 different conversations with 10 same-gender strangers and counted the instances of laughter for each person in each conversation. After each conversation, participants rated their perceived similarity with their partner and how much they enjoyed the conversation. More than half the variability in the amount a person laughed was attributable to the person laughing-some people tend to laugh more than others. By contrast, less than 5% of the variability was attributable to the laugher's partner. We also found that the more a person laughed, the more their partners felt similar to them. Counterintuitively, laughter negatively predicted conversation enjoyment. These findings suggest that, in conversations between strangers, laughter may not be a straightforward signal of amusement, but rather a social tool. We did not find any personality predictors of how much a person laughs or elicits laughter. In summary, how much a person laughs in conversation appears to be a stable trait associated with being relatable, and is not necessarily reflective of enjoyment. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience'.

Evidence for Distinct Facial Signals of Reward, Affiliation, and Dominance from Both Perception and Production Tasks.

Smiles are nonverbal signals that convey social information and influence the social behavior of recipients, but the precise form and social function of a smile can be variable. In previous work, we have proposed that there are at least three physically distinct types of smiles associated with specific social functions: reward smiles signal positive affect and reinforce desired behavior; affiliation smiles signal non-threat and promote peaceful social interactions; dominance smiles signal feelings of superiority and are used to negotiate status hierarchies. The present work advances the science of the smile by addressing a number of questions that directly arise from this smile typology. What do perceivers think when they see each type of smile (Study 1)? How do perceivers behave in response to each type of smile (Study 2)? Do people produce three physically distinct smiles in response to contexts related to each of the three social functions of smiles (Study 3)? We then use an online machine learning platform to uncover the labels that lay people use to conceptualize the smile of affiliation, which is a smile that serves its social function but lacks a corresponding lay concept. Taken together, the present findings support the conclusion that reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles are distinct signals with specific social functions. These findings challenge the traditional assumption that smiles merely convey whether and to what extent a smiler is happy and demonstrate the utility of a social-functional approach to the study of facial expression.

Categorization of Vocal Emotion Cues Depends on Distributions of Input.

Learners use the distributional properties of stimuli to identify environmentally relevant categories in a range of perceptual domains, including words, shapes, faces, and colors. We examined whether similar processes may also operate on affective information conveyed through the voice. In Experiment 1, we tested how adults (18-22-year-olds) and children (8-10-year-olds) categorized affective states communicated by vocalizations varying continuously from "calm" to "upset." We found that the threshold for categorizing both verbal (i.e., spoken word) and nonverbal (i.e., a yell) vocalizations as "upset" depended on the statistical distribution of the stimuli participants encountered. In Experiment 2, we replicated and extended these findings in adults using vocalizations that conveyed multiple negative affect states. These results suggest perceivers' flexibly and rapidly update their interpretation of affective vocal cues based upon context. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00038-w.

Correction to: Evidence for Distinct Facial Signals of Reward, Affiliation, and Dominance from Both Perception and Production Tasks.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s42761-020-00024-8.].

Historical Migration Patterns Shape Contemporary Cultures of Emotion.

Human emotional behavior varies across cultures. Smiling at a passing stranger on the street may seem perfectly normal in one culture and profoundly strange or even suspicious in another. What are the origins of cultural differences in emotional expression, communication, and regulation? We review new evidence in favor of one answer to this question. A socioecological factor, historical heterogeneity-defined as the ancestral diversity of the world's regions based on human migration patterns over centuries-accounts for important cultural variations in emotional experience and expression. We summarize findings from studies of large global samples that link the migratory history of a country's population with present-day cultural differences in how overtly and clearly emotions are expressed to others, in the frequency and meaning of smiles, and in associated character traits. New research also extends the analysis to the historical heterogeneity of the United States, and country-level findings are replicated at the level of the states. We suggest that enduring emotional behaviors and traits evolve from the opportunities and challenges posed by the commingling of people of diverse ancestries. We conclude by highlighting the questions and challenges for future research stemming from this approach.

Does emotion influence visual perception? Depends on how you look at it.

One of the biggest challenges in the study of emotion-cognition interaction is addressing the question of whether and how emotions influence processes of perception as distinct from other higher-level cognitive processes. Most theories of emotion agree that an emotion episode begins with a sensory experience - such as a visual percept - that elicits a cascade of affective, cognitive, physiological, and/or behavioural responses (the ordering and inclusion of those latter components being forever debated). However, for decades, a subset of philosophers and scientists have suggested that the presumed perception → emotion relationship is in fact bidirectional, with emotion also altering the perceptual process. In the present review we reflect on the history and empirical support (or, some might argue, lack thereof) for the notion that emotion influences visual perception. We examine ways in which researchers have attempted to test the question, and the ways in which this pursuit is so difficult. As is the case with the ongoing debate about the cognitive penetrability of perception, we conclude that nothing is conclusive in the debate about the emotional penetrability of perception. We nonetheless don rose-coloured glasses as we look forward to the future of this research topic.

A sad thumbs up: incongruent gestures and disrupted sensorimotor activity both slow processing of facial expressions.

Recognising a facial expression is more difficult when the expresser's body conveys incongruent affect. Existing research has documented such interference for universally recognisable bodily expressions. However, it remains unknown whether learned, conventional gestures can interfere with facial expression processing. Study 1 participants (N = 62) viewed videos of people simultaneously producing facial expressions and hand gestures and reported the valence of either the face or hand. Responses were slower and less accurate when the face-hand pairing was incongruent compared to congruent. We hypothesised that hand gestures might exert an even stronger influence on facial expression processing when other routes to understanding the meaning of a facial expression, such as with sensorimotor simulation, are disrupted. Participants in Study 2 (N = 127) completed the same task, but the facial mobility of some participants was restricted, which disrupted face processing in prior work. The hand-face congruency effect from Study 1 was replicated. The facial mobility manipulation affected males only, and it did not moderate the congruency effect. The present work suggests the affective meaning of conventional gestures is processed automatically and can interfere with face perception, but does not suggest that perceivers rely more on gestures when sensorimotor face processing is disrupted.

Probabilistic learning of emotion categories.

Although the configurations of facial muscles that humans perceive vary continuously, we often represent emotions as categories. This suggests that, as in other domains of categorical perception such as speech and color perception, humans become attuned to features of emotion cues that map onto meaningful thresholds for these signals given their environments. However, little is known about the learning processes underlying the representation of these salient social signals. In Experiment 1 we test the role of statistical distributions of facial cues in the maintenance of an emotion category in both children (6-8 years old) and adults (18-22 years old). Children and adults learned the boundary between neutral and angry when provided with explicit feedback (supervised learning). However, after we exposed participants to different statistical distributions of facial cues, they rapidly shifted their category boundaries for each emotion during a testing phase. In Experiments 2 and 3, we replicated this finding and also tested the extent to which learners are able to track statistical distributions for multiple actors. Not only did participants form actor-specific categories, but the distributions of facial cues also influenced participants' trait judgments about the actors. Taken together, these data are consistent with the view that the way humans construe emotion (in this case, anger) is not only flexible, but reflects complex learning about the distributions of the myriad cues individuals experience in their social environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Heterogeneity of long-history migration predicts smiling, laughter and positive emotion across the globe and within the United States.

Recent findings demonstrate that heterogeneity of long-history migration predicts present-day emotion behaviors and norms. Residents of countries characterized by high ancestral diversity display emotion expressions that are easier to decode by observers, endorse norms of higher emotion expressivity, and smile more in response to certain stimuli than residents of countries that lack ancestral diversity. We build on the extant findings and investigate historical heterogeneity as a predictor of daily smiling, laughter, and positive emotion across the world's countries and the states of the United States. Study 1 finds that historical heterogeneity is positively associated with self-reports of smiling, laughter, and positive emotions in the Gallup World Poll when controlling for GDP and present-day population diversity. Study 2 extends the findings to effects of long-history migration within the United States. We estimated the average percentage of foreign-born citizens in each state between 1850 and 2010 based on US Census information as an indicator of historical heterogeneity. Consistent with the world findings of Study 1, historical heterogeneity predicted smiling, laughter, and positive, but not negative, emotion. The relationships remained significant when controlling for per capita income and present-day population diversity of each state. Together, the findings further demonstrate the important role of long-history migration in shaping emotion cultures of countries and states, which persist beyond the original socio-ecological conditions, and open promising avenues for cross-cultural research.

Smiles as Multipurpose Social Signals.

The human smile is highly variable in both its form and the social contexts in which it is displayed. A social-functional account identifies three distinct smile expressions defined in terms of their effects on the perceiver: reward smiles reinforce desired behavior; affiliation smiles invite and maintain social bonds; and dominance smiles manage hierarchical relationships. Mathematical modeling uncovers the appearance of the smiles, and both human and Bayesian classifiers validate these distinctions. New findings link laughter to reward, affiliation, and dominance, and research suggests that these functions of smiles are recognized across cultures. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the smile can be productively investigated according to how it assists the smiler in meeting the challenges and opportunities inherent in human social living.

Feelings and contexts: socioecological influences on the nonverbal expression of emotion.

Despite their relative universality, nonverbal displays of emotion are often sources of cross-cultural misunderstandings. The present article considers the relevance of historical and present socio-ecological contexts, such as heterogeneity of long-history migration, pathogen prevalence, and residential mobility for cross-cultural variation in emotional expression. We review recent evidence linking these constructs to psychological processes and discuss how the findings are relevant to the nonverbal communication of emotion. We hold that socioecological variables, because of their specificity and tractability, provide a promising framework for explaining why different cultures developed varying modes of emotional expression.