Positive Feeling, Negative Meaning: Visualizing the Mental Representations of In-Group and Out-Group Smiles.

ABSTRACT: Even though smiles are seen as universal facial expressions, research shows that there exist various kinds of smiles (i.e., affiliative smiles, dominant smiles). Accordingly, we suggest that there also exist various mental representations of smiles. Which representation is employed in cognition may depend on social factors, such as the smiling person's group membership: Since in-group members are typically seen as more benevolent than out-group members, in-group smiles should be associated with more benevolent social meaning than those conveyed by out-group members. We visualized in-group and out-group smiles with reverse correlation image classification. These visualizations indicated that mental representations of in-group smiles indeed express more benevolent social meaning than those o

SUBMITTER: Paulus A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4786158 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature