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

Socpus ID

85019563337 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85019563337

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