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How Real is that Smile? Mood Effects on Accepting or Rejecting the Veracity of Emotional Facial Expressions

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Abstract

Does mood influence people’s tendency to accept observed facial expressions as genuine? Based on recent theories of affect and cognition, two experiments predicted and found that negative mood increased and positive mood decreased people’s skepticism about the genuineness of facial expressions. After a mood induction, participants viewed images of faces displaying (a) positive, neutral, and negative expressions (Exp. 1), or (b) displays of six specific emotions (Exp. 2). Judgments of genuineness, valence, and confidence ratings were collected. As predicted, positive affect increased, and negative affect decreased the perceived genuineness of facial expressions, and there was some evidence for affect-congruence in judgments. The relevance of these findings for everyday nonverbal communication and strategic interpersonal behavior are considered, and their implications for recent affect-cognition theories are discussed.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that no claim is made here about the effects of mood on the actual accuracy of judges in detecting real vs. fake facial expressions. As all facial expressions were posed, the focus of this paper is on the effects of mood on judges’ inclination to accept, or reject observed facial expressions as genuine.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for financial support to Joseph P. Forgas from the Australian Research Council, the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

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  1. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia

    Joseph P. Forgas & Rebekah East

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  1. Joseph P. Forgas
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  2. Rebekah East
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Correspondence to Joseph P. Forgas.

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Forgas, J.P., East, R. How Real is that Smile? Mood Effects on Accepting or Rejecting the Veracity of Emotional Facial Expressions. J Nonverbal Behav 32, 157–170 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-008-0050-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-008-0050-1

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