Personality Across World Regions Predicts Variability in the Structure of Face Impressions.

Research on face impressions has often focused on a fixed, universal architecture, treating regional variability as noise. Here, we demonstrated a crucial yet neglected role of cultural learning processes in forming face impressions. In Study 1, we found that variability in the structure of adult perceivers' face impressions across 42 world regions (N = 287,178) could be explained by variability in the actual personality structure of people living in those regions. In Study 2, data from 232 world regions (N = 307,136) revealed that adult perceivers use the actual personality structure learned from their local environment to form lay beliefs about personality, and these beliefs in turn support the structure of perceivers' face impressions. Together, these results suggest that people form face impressions on the basis of a conceptual understanding of personality structure that they have come to learn from their regional environment. The findings suggest a need for greater attention to the regional and cultural specificity of face impressions.

Emojis as social information in digital communication.

Facial expressions of emotion are nonverbal cues that evoke affective, inferential, and social responses during face-to-face communication. Given that communication is moving more and more from face-to-face to digital contexts, the present research tested the functional equivalence of their digital counterparts-emojis. Eleven high-powered experiments tested the general effectiveness of emojis to convey emotionality and to disambiguate discourse during digital communication, as well as predictions about their social-emotional properties derived from the Emotion as Social Information (EASI) model. Compared to messages without emojis, those including emojis were perceived as emotionally more intense and as of more extreme valence. Furthermore, the effects of emojis on perceived valence were mediated via perceived emotional intensity. This suggests that emojis are effective quasi-nonverbal cues for digital communication. Furthermore, in line with predictions of the EASI model, emojis produced patterns similar to what has been observed for facial expressions of emotion in face-to-face communication, supporting their functional equivalence. Specifically, they instigated affective (emotion contagion) and inferential (understanding) processes, which subsequently resulted in behavioral intentions (empathic concern). In terms of the predicted mediating processes, we found differences between emojis and offline facial expressions of emotion. These deviations from our predictions are attributed to inherent differences between digital and face-to-face communication and limitations in the employed methodology. In light of the present findings, we discuss a theoretical synthesis of emojis in digital communication with the EASI model and propose a research agenda to connect emotion research with predominant forms of modern communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Living in ancestrally diverse states of the United States is associated with greater vagal tone.

Historically, exposure to dissimilar others ("strangers") was a physiologically arousing event-resulting in avoidance, distrust, and even conflict. Despite this, contemporary migration patterns are increasing intergroup contact. What gives rise to an individual's ability to regulate their arousal such that social engagement with outgroup members is possible? We propose that cultural practices that evolve in ancestrally diverse, compared to ancestrally homogeneous, societies provide more opportunities for society members to engage in emotion regulation. This regulatory exercise, in turn, promotes higher vagal tone-a physiological indicator of one's ability to effectively manage arousal in social interaction. In a secondary analysis of data from the MIDUS 2 Biomarker Project, we find that the ancestral diversity of the states of the United States significantly predicts the average vagal tone of the state's citizens. The findings suggest that social context is associated with predictable and significant adaptations of human physiology over individual lifetimes.

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.

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.].

Low cardiac vagal control is associated with genetic liability for elevated triglycerides and risky health behaviors.

Low parasympathetic regulation of cardiac activity, known as cardiac vagal control (CVC), is robustly associated with poor health outcomes. However, the etiological mechanism that undergirds this association remains largely unknown. One explanation is a causal relationship wherein health problems cause low CVC, or vice versa. However, an alternative explanation is that a common set of genetic factors contributes to both increased liability for poor health and low CVC (i.e., pleiotropy). The present study uses polygenic risk scores for a number of health-related phenotypes (physical, mental, behavioral) to test whether genetic liability for poor health has pleiotropic effects on CVC. We report evidence for shared genetic liability between low CVC and both poor physical health (elevated triglycerides) and risky health-related behaviors (increased drinking and sexual activity). The present findings are consistent with shared genetic liability explaining, at least in part, the well-documented correlation between CVC and health.

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.

Functionally distinct smiles elicit different physiological responses in an evaluative context.

When people are being evaluated, their whole body responds. Verbal feedback causes robust activation in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. What about nonverbal evaluative feedback? Recent discoveries about the social functions of facial expression have documented three morphologically distinct smiles, which serve the functions of reinforcement, social smoothing, and social challenge. In the present study, participants saw instances of one of three smile types from an evaluator during a modified social stress test. We find evidence in support of the claim that functionally different smiles are sufficient to augment or dampen HPA axis activity. We also find that responses to the meanings of smiles as evaluative feedback are more differentiated in individuals with higher baseline high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), which is associated with facial expression recognition accuracy. The differentiation is especially evident in response to smiles that are more ambiguous in context. Findings suggest that facial expressions have deep physiological implications and that smiles regulate the social world in a highly nuanced fashion.

Functional Smiles: Tools for Love, Sympathy, and War.

A smile is the most frequent facial expression, but not all smiles are equal. A social-functional account holds that smiles of reward, affiliation, and dominance serve basic social functions, including rewarding behavior, bonding socially, and negotiating hierarchy. Here, we characterize the facial-expression patterns associated with these three types of smiles. Specifically, we modeled the facial expressions using a data-driven approach and showed that reward smiles are symmetrical and accompanied by eyebrow raising, affiliative smiles involve lip pressing, and dominance smiles are asymmetrical and contain nose wrinkling and upper-lip raising. A Bayesian-classifier analysis and a detection task revealed that the three smile types are highly distinct. Finally, social judgments made by a separate participant group showed that the different smile types convey different social messages. Our results provide the first detailed description of the physical form and social messages conveyed by these three types of functional smiles and document the versatility of these facial expressions.