Abstract
Participants’ faces were covertly recorded while they rated the attractiveness of people, the decorative appeal of paintings, and the cuteness of animals. Ratings employed a continuous scale. The same participants then returned and tried to guess ratings from 3-s videotapes of themselves and other targets. Performance was above chance in all three stimulus categories, thereby replicating the results of an earlier study (North et al. in J Exp Soc Psychol 46(6):1109–1113, 2010) but this time using a more sensitive rating procedure. Across conditions, accuracy in reading one’s own face was not reliably better than other-accuracy. We discuss our findings in the context of “simulation” theories of face-based emotion recognition (Goldman in The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) and the larger body of accuracy research.
Notes
As a non-parametric follow-up, we conducted a Monte Carlo randomization, permuting target and perceiver ratings for each domain ten thousand times. This formed a reference probability distribution of accuracy scores based upon the original data set, to which we could compare the current study’s observed accuracy scores. We counted the number of times a given perceiver's other-score was greater than 95 % of the other-scores computed from the randomized data. In each case, the success rate exceeded what is expected from chance alone (all ps < .01), thereby providing corroborating evidence for our findings.
References
Ambadar, Z., Schooler, J. W., & Cohn, J. F. (2005). Deciphering the enigmatic face: The importance of facial dynamics in interpreting subtle facial expressions. Psychological Science, 16(5), 403–410.
Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., & Jolliffe, T. (1997). Is there a “language of the eyes”? Evidence from normal adults, and adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome. Visual Cognition, 4(3), 311–331.
Barr, C. L., & Kleck, R. E. (1995). Self-other perception of the intensity of facial expressions of emotion: Do we know what we show? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 608–618.
Buck, R. (1979). Measuring individual differences in nonverbal communication of affect: The slide-viewing paradigm. Human Communication Research, 6, 47–57.
Ekman, P. (1989). The argument and evidence about universals in facial expressions of emotion. In H. Wagner & A. Manstead (Eds.), Handbook of social psychophysiology (pp. 143–164). Chichester: Wiley.
Goldman, A. I. (2006). The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldman, A. I., & Sripada, C. S. (2005). Simulationist models of face-based emotion recognition. Cognition, 94, 193–213.
Gosling, S. D., John, O. P., Craik, K. H., & Robins, R. W. (1998). Do people know how they behave? Self-reported act frequencies compared with on-line codings by observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1337–1349.
Gosselin, P., Kirouac, G., & Doré, F. Y. (1995). Components and recognition of facial expression in the communication of emotion by actors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(1), 83–96.
Hall, J. A., Andrzejewski, S. A., Murphy, N. A., Schmid Mast, M., & Feinstein, B. A. (2008). Accuracy of judging others’ traits and states: Comparing mean levels across tests. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1476–1489.
Hall, J. A., Murphy, N. A., & Schmid Mast, M. (2007). Nonverbal self-accuracy in interpersonal interaction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(12), 1675–1685.
Hess, U., Blairy, S., & Kleck, R. E. (1997). The intensity of emotional facial expressions and decoding accuracy. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 21(4), 241–257.
Hess, U., Kappas, A., McHugo, G. J., Kleck, R. E., & Lanzetta, J. T. (1989). An analysis of the encoding and decoding of spontaneous and posed smiles: The use of facial electromyopgraphy. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 13(2), 121–137.
Hess, U., Sénecal, S., & Thibeault, P. (2004). Do we know what we show? Individuals’ perceptions of their own emotional reactions. Current Psychology of Cognition, 22, 247–265.
Ickes, W. (1997). Introduction. In W. Ickes (Ed.), Empathic accuracy (pp. 1–16). New York: Guilford Press.
Jarvis, B. G. (2008). MediaLab (Version 2008.1.33) [Computer Software]. New York, NY: Empirisoft Corporation.
Krumhuber, E., & Kappas, A. (2005). Moving smiles: The role of dynamic components for the perception of the genuineness of smiles. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29(1), 3–24.
Niedenthal, P. M. (2007). Embodying emotion. Science, 316, 1002–1005.
Niedenthal, P. M., Barsalou, L. W., Winkielman, P., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Ric, F. (2005). Embodiment in attitudes, social perception, and emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(3), 184–211.
North, M. S., Todorov, A., & Osherson, D. N. (2010). Inferring the preferences of others from spontaneous, low-emotional facial expressions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 1109–1113.
Rosenthal, R., & Rubin, D. B. (1982). A simple, general purpose display of magnitude of experimental effect. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74, 166–169.
Wehrle, T., Kaiser, S., Schmidt, S., & Scherer, K. R. (2000). Studying the dynamics of emotional expression using synthesized facial muscle movements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(1), 105–119.
Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2008). It takes two: The interpersonal nature of empathy. Psychological Science, 19(4), 399–404.
Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2009). Unpacking the informational bases of empathic accuracy. Emotion, 9(4), 478–487.
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2011). Re-integrating accuracy into social cognition research. Psychological Inquiry, 22(3), 159–182.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
North, M.S., Todorov, A. & Osherson, D.N. Accuracy of Inferring Self- and Other-Preferences from Spontaneous Facial Expressions. J Nonverbal Behav 36, 227–233 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-012-0137-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-012-0137-6