The Insidious Effects Of Smiles On Social Judgments
Abstract
Smiles are widely used as a marketing tool to produce positive impressions. Sales assistants, restaurant servers, and store cashiers are often trained to smile when they interact with customers (Hen-nig-Thurau et al. 2006), probably because smiles positively influence interpersonal judgments in a myriad of ways. People who smile are perceived to be kinder, more sociable, more honest (Thornton 1943), more pleasant (Mueser et al. 1984), more carefree (Deutsch, LeB-aron, and Fryer 1987), and more polite (Bugental 1986) than people who do not. Such associations may lead one to believe that smiles always convey positive information and hence, the bigger the smile, the better. Indeed, research has documented that people deliberately intensify positive emotional displays to receive favorable social feedback (Andrade and Ho 2009). In this research, however, we caution that bigger and broader smiles sometimes bring forth undesirable consequences. Well-intended broad smiles are not always benefiicial, and can even have a boomerang effect on consumers'judgments and behaviors.
Publication Date
1-1-2016
Publication Title
Advances in Consumer Research
Volume
44
Number of Pages
665-669
Document Type
Article; Proceedings Paper
Personal Identifier
scopus
Copyright Status
Unknown
Socpus ID
85019563337 (Scopus)
Source API URL
https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85019563337
STARS Citation
Wang, Ze; Mao, Huifang; Li, Jessica; and Liu, Fan, "The Insidious Effects Of Smiles On Social Judgments" (2016). Scopus Export 2015-2019. 4512.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/scopus2015/4512