Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
Publication Date
6-1-2016
Volume
40
Issue
2
First Page
101
Last Page
116
Publisher
Springer New York LLC
Keywords
Smile, Honesty, Intelligence, Corruption, Uncertainty avoidance, Culture
Abstract
Smiling individuals are usually perceived more favorably than non-smiling ones—they are judged as happier, more attractive, competent, and friendly. These seemingly clear and obvious consequences of smiling are assumed to be culturally universal, however most of the psychological research is carried out in WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and the influence of culture on social perception of nonverbal behavior is still understudied. Here we show that a smiling individual may be judged as less intelligent than the same non-smiling individual in cultures low on the GLOBE’s uncertainty avoidance dimension. Furthermore, we show that corruption at the societal level may undermine the prosocial perception of smiling—in societies with high corruption indicators, trust toward smiling individuals is reduced. This research fosters understanding of the cultural framework surrounding nonverbal communication processes and reveals that in some cultures smiling may lead to negative attributions.
DOI
10.1007/s10919-015-0226-4
Print ISSN
01915886
E-ISSN
15733653
Funding Information
Research was supported by the Polish NCN Grant 2011/03/N/HS6/05112 (K.K.) and Chinese NNSF Grant 31200788 (C.X). {2011/03/N/HS6/05112 (K.K.), 31200788 (C.X)}
Publisher Statement
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Krys, K., Vauclair, C.-M., Capaldi, C. A., Lun, V. M.-C., Bond, M. H., Domínguez-Espinosa, A,...Yu, A. A. (2016). Be careful where you smile: Culture shapes judgments of intelligence and honesty of smiling individuals. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 40(2), 101-116. doi: 10.1007/s10919-015-0226-4