IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04325734.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Smiles behind a mask are detectable and affect judgments of attractiveness, trustworthiness, and competence

Author

Listed:
  • Astrid Hopfensitz

    (EM - EMLyon Business School)

  • Cesar Mantilla

Abstract

"Smiling is a popular and powerful facial signal used to influence how we are judged and evaluated by others. The recent COVID pandemic made the use of face masks common around the world. Since face masks, when properly worn, cover the lower half of the face, a common concern is that they inhibit our ability to signal to others through facial expressions like smiles. In this paper, we show through three subsequent studies that smiling faces are easily distinguished from neutral faces even if the person is wearing a face mask (Study 1, N = 1814). We further show that smiling behind a face mask significantly influences ratings regarding attractiveness, trustworthiness, and competence (Study 2, N = 250). We finally show that individuals with about 18 months of experience with face masks are well aware that smiling behind face masks will influence ratings regarding attractiveness and trustworthiness by others (Study 3, N = 94). Together, our studies provide evidence that face masks should not be seen as a threat that inhibits simple non-verbal communication through smiles."

Suggested Citation

  • Astrid Hopfensitz & Cesar Mantilla, 2023. "Smiles behind a mask are detectable and affect judgments of attractiveness, trustworthiness, and competence," Post-Print hal-04325734, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04325734
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bejarano, Hernán & Gillet, Joris & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael, 2021. "Trust and trustworthiness after negative random shocks," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    2. Póvoa, Angela Cristiane Santos & Pech, Wesley & Viacava, Juan José Camou & Schwartz, Marcos Tadeu, 2020. "Is the beauty premium accessible to all? An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Jaeger, Bastian & Sleegers, Willem W.A. & Evans, Anthony M. & Stel, Mariëlle & van Beest, Ilja, 2019. "The effects of facial attractiveness and trustworthiness in online peer-to-peer markets," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PA).
    4. Sofianos, Andis, 2022. "Self-reported & revealed trust: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    5. Andreoni, James & Petrie, Ragan, 2008. "Beauty, gender and stereotypes: Evidence from laboratory experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 73-93, February.
    6. Scharlemann, Jorn P. W. & Eckel, Catherine C. & Kacelnik, Alex & Wilson, Rick K., 2001. "The value of a smile: Game theory with a human face," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 617-640, October.
    7. Samuele Centorrino & Elodie Djemaï & Astrid Hopfensitz & Manfred Milinski & Paul Seabright, 2015. "Honest signalling in trust interactions: smiles rated as genuine induce trust and signal higher earnings opportunities," Post-Print hal-01518371, HAL.
    8. Bonowski, Tim & Minnameier, Gerhard, 2022. "Morality and trust in impersonal relationships," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    9. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13933 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Godoy, Ricardo & Reyes-Garcia, Victoria & Huanca, Tomas & Tanner, Susan & Leonard, William R. & McDade, Thomas & Vadez, Vincent, 2005. "Do smiles have a face value? Panel evidence from Amazonian Indians," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 469-490, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fazio, Andrea, 2022. "Attractiveness and preferences for redistribution," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    2. Andrea Fazio, 2021. "Beautiful inequality: Are beautiful people more willing to redistribute?," Working Papers in Public Economics 194, University of Rome La Sapienza, Department of Economics and Law.
    3. Du, Ninghua & Song, Fei & Cadsby, C. Bram, 2022. "You cannot judge a book by its cover: Evidence from a laboratory experiment on recognizing generosity from facial information," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    4. Chen, Daniel & Hopfensitz, Astrid & van Leeuwen, Boris & van de Ven, Jeroen, 2019. "The Strategic Display of Emotions," Discussion Paper 2019-014, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    5. KAUFMANN, Wesley & VAN WITTELOOSTUIJN, Arjen & BOONE, Christophe, 2009. "Colorful economics: Seeing red in a prisoner's dilemma game," ACED Working Papers 2009007, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    6. Andreoni, James & Petrie, Ragan, 2004. "Public goods experiments without confidentiality: a glimpse into fund-raising," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1605-1623, July.
    7. KAUFMANN, Wesley & VAN WITTELOOSTUIJN, Arjen & BOONE, Christophe, 2009. "Colorful economics: Seeing red in a prisoner's dilemma game," Working Papers 2009017, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    8. Anastasios Koukoumelis & Maria Vittoria Levati & Chiara Nardi, 2021. "Social and Moral Distance in Risky Settings," Working Papers 13/2021, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    9. Billur Aksoy & Catherine C. Eckel & Rick K. Wilson, 2018. "Can I Rely on You?," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-14, October.
    10. Bonowski, Tim & Minnameier, Gerhard, 2022. "Morality and trust in impersonal relationships," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    11. Joyce Guo & María P. Recalde, 2023. "Overriding in Teams: The Role of Beliefs, Social Image, and Gender," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 2239-2262, April.
    12. J Jobu Babin, 2020. "Linguistic signaling, emojis, and skin tone in trust games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-14, June.
    13. Leeson, Peter T., 2005. "Endogenizing fractionalization," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 75-98, June.
    14. Nault, Kelly A. & Sezer, Ovul & Klein, Nadav, 2023. "It’s the journey, not just the destination: Conveying interpersonal warmth in written introductions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    15. Zakaria Babutsidze & Nobuyuki Hanaki & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2019. "Digital Communication and Swift Trust," Post-Print halshs-02409314, HAL.
    16. Morone, A. & Morone, P. & Germani, A.R., 2014. "Individual and group behaviour in the traveler's dilemma: An experimental study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-7.
    17. Vincent P. Crawford & Nagore Iriberri, 2004. "Fatal Attraction: Focality, Naivete, and Sophistication in Experimental Hide-and-Seek Games," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000316, UCLA Department of Economics.
    18. repec:cup:judgdm:v:8:y:2013:i:3:p:381-385 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Schwieren, Christiane & Sutter, Matthias, 2008. "Trust in cooperation or ability? An experimental study on gender differences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 494-497, June.
    20. Parrett, Matt, 2015. "Beauty and the feast: Examining the effect of beauty on earnings using restaurant tipping data," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 34-46.
    21. Wai S. Tse & Yan Lu & Alyson J. Bond & Raymond CK Chan & Danny W.H. Tam, 2011. "Facial emotion linked cooperation in patients with paranoid schizophrenia: A test on the Interpersonal Communication Model," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 57(5), pages 509-517, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04325734. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.