Imperceptible
Smile (or grimace) through the pain? The effects of experimentally manipulated facial expressions on needle-injection responses
Sarah Pressman et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Smiling has been previously shown to improve stress responses. We replicated and expanded this work by testing whether smiling helps with a potent real-world stressor: a vaccination-like needle injection. We also extended past research by examining grimacing, a facial expression known to naturally occur during stress and pain and one that shares some of the same facial action units as smiling. Participants (n = 231; [M]age = 19.2) were randomized to hold either a Duchenne smile, a non-Duchenne smile, a grimace, or a neutral expression while receiving a 25-gauge needle injection of saline solution. Expression was covertly manipulated via cover story and chopstick placement in the mouth. Heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) were collected continuously alongside self-reports of pain, emotion, and distress. Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated a between-subjects effect of facial condition on self-reported pain as well as a Condition × Time effect. Probing each time point revealed the strongest effect to be at needle injection, where the Duchenne smile and grimace groups reported approximately 40% less needle pain versus the neutral group. Repeated-measures ANOVAs also revealed differences between conditions for both HR and EDA. In post hoc analyses, only the Duchenne smile group exhibited significantly lower HR than neutral, with marginal Duchenne benefits found for EDA. Together, these findings indicate that both smiling and grimacing can improve subjective needle pain experiences, but Duchenne smiling may be better suited for blunting the stress-induced physiological responses of the body versus other facial expressions.
When photos backfire: Truthiness and falsiness effects in comparative judgments
Lynn Zhang, Eryn Newman & Norbert Schwarz
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Claims are more likely to be judged true when presented with a related nonprobative photo (Newman et al., 2012). According to a processing fluency account, related photos facilitate processing and easy processing fosters acceptance of the claim. Alternatively, according to an illusion-of-evidence account, related photos may increase acceptance of the claim because they are treated as tentative supportive evidence. We disentangle these potential mechanisms by using comparative claims. In forming comparative judgments, people first assess attributes of the linguistic subject of comparison and subsequently compare them to attributes of the referent (Tversky, 1977). Hence, photos of the linguistic subject in a sentence should facilitate, but photos of the linguistic referent should impair, fluent processing of this sequence. In contrast, a photo of either the subject or the referent can be perceived as tentative evidence. In two experiments (total N = 1200), photos of the subject increased acceptance of comparative claims relative to a no-photo condition (a truthiness effect), but only when the subject was otherwise difficult to visualize. Photos of the referent decreased acceptance of comparative claims relative to a no-photo condition (a falsiness effect), but only when the subject of comparison was otherwise easy to visualize. All results are consistent with a context-sensitive fluency account: increases in fluency foster, and decreases in fluency impair, acceptance of a claim as true. The results provide no support for an illusion-of-evidence account.
Creative thinking facilitates perspective taking
Zheshuai Yang & Iris Hung
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors propose that an individual’s disposition for perspective taking may be facilitated by creative thinking, which involves a cognitive procedure with shifting angles and generating multiple solutions to a problem. Specifically, engaging in creative thinking in an incidental situation may activate a general procedure of changing perspectives, giving rise to a perspective-shifting mindset, which enhances an individual’s tendency to take the perspective of targets described in a subsequently encountered, unrelated message, and this consequently affects the message’s impact. A pilot study shows that creativity personality is positively correlated with the tendency toward spatial and conceptual perspective taking. In addition, in various persuasive contexts that involve real donations and brand evaluations, the present research demonstrates that participants who adopted creative thinking (vs. control) were more likely to take the perspective of a target described in (a) a charity appeal, and (b) commercial messages. They were more likely to (a) make a donation, (b) evaluate a brand more favorably, and (c) ascribe characteristics of the target to the self. The hypothesized effect is moderated by the nature of the context — whether or not a shift of perspective in processing the message is required.
Situated Embodiment: When Physical Weight Does and Does Not Inform Judgments of Importance
David Hauser & Norbert Schwarz
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Bodily sensations impact metaphorically related judgments. Are such effects obligatory or do they follow the logic of knowledge accessibility? If the latter, the impact of sensory information should be moderated by the accessibility of the related metaphor at the time of sensory experience. We manipulated whether “importance” was on participants’ minds when they held a physically heavy versus light book. Participants held the book while making an importance judgment versus returned it before making the judgment (Study 1) or learned prior to holding the book that the study was about “importance evaluations” versus “graphics evaluations” (Study 2). In both studies, the same book was judged more important when its heft was increased but only when importance was on participants’ minds at the time of sensory experience. We conclude that sensory experiences only impact metaphorically related judgments when the applicable metaphor is highly accessible at the time of experience.
Phylogenetic proximity influences humans’ depictions of nonhuman primates on Instagram
Annukka Lindell & Kaarina Lindell
Laterality: Asymmetries of Brain, Behaviour, and Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Portraits of humans favour the left cheek, with emotion thought to drive this posing asymmetry. In primates the emotion-dominant right hemisphere predominantly controls the left hemiface, rendering the left cheek anatomically more expressive than the right. As perceptions of nonhuman primates vary with genetic relatedness, depictions of nonhuman primates should theoretically be influenced by their phylogenetic proximity to humans. The present study thus examined whether humans depict nonhuman primates showing the left cheek, and whether depictions vary with evolutionary distance. Photographs of nonhuman primates were sourced from Instagram’s “Most recent” feed: great apes (#chimpanzee, #bonobo, #gorilla, #orangutan), lesser apes (#gibbon), Old World monkeys (#baboon, #macaque, #proboscismonkey), New World monkeys (#spidermonkey, #marmosetmonkey, #capuchin), and prosimians (#lemur, #slowloris, #tarsier). The first 500 single-subject images for each hashtag (except #slowloris for which 318 images were available) were coded for pose orientation (left, right) and portrait type (head/torso, full body). As anticipated, there was a left cheek bias for great apes but no bias for more distantly related primates. These data thus suggest that depictions of nonhuman primates are implicitly influenced by phylogenetic proximity: the more closely related the primate, the more likely we are to depict them as we do ourselves, showing the left cheek.