Smiling, Appeasement, and the Silent Bared-Teeth Display

Peter Goldenthal, Robert E. Johnston, and Robert E. Kraut Cornell University

Two field studies investigated the role of smiling in awk- ward or unpleasant social situations. ln the first study, a confederate stood by the counter of a campus sundries shop, and waited on all control subjects who ap- proached. He told approaching experimental subjects, however, that he did not work there, attempting to lead those subjects to think they had made a social mistake. In the second study, experimental subjects were led to believe that they had interrupted a conversation between two other individuals. Control subjects simply walked through a doorway on each side of which people were standing. In both studies more experimental than control subjects apologlzed and smiled, demonstrating that smil- ing does occur in at least some socially uncomfortable situations. The data also suggest that in some situations smiling may signal a desire to appease another, and that ln this sense it can be behaviorally homologous to the silent bared teeth display of nonhuman primates.

Key Words: Smiling: Appeasement.

INTRODUCTION

Those interested in the origins and functions of smiling have generally followed the path marked by Darwin (1872/1965). They have treated smil- ing primarily as a diminished form of laughter, and as an emotional expression of happiness or pleasure. There is a great deal of evidence that smiling consistently carries these emotional messages in preliterate, as well as in literate cul-

Received January 27, 1981; revised June 17, 1981. Address reprint requests to: Peter Goldenthal, Department

of Psychiatry, Children’s Hospital Medical Center, 300 Long- wood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. USA.

tures (Ekman, 1973). At the same time, studies conducted by van Hooff (1962, 1967, 1972) sug- gest that facial expressions of nonhuman pri- mates consisting of teeth-baring and mouth cor- ner retraction, physical characteristics of human smiling, function in appeasement, reassurance, and in promoting affiliation. Although we accept the role that smiling often plays in communi- cating emotional messages, we have been stim- ulated by HoofFs work to investigate the addi- tional role of this facial expression in communicating other messages.

Van Hooffs ideas about the affrliative and appeasement functions of smiling arise from his observations of nonhuman primates. Two facial displays of these species show remarkable mor- phological smiliarity to human smiling and laughter. The silent bared-teeth display, or grin- face, involves lifting and retracting of corners of the mouth and the lips, revealing both teeth and gums, and occurs in a number of primate species, including Macaca, Cynopirhecus, Ther- opithecus, Mandrillus, Papio, and Pan (van Hooff, 1962, 1967, 1972). The relaxed open- mouth display, or play-face, characteristically involves a widely opened mouth, with lips left covering most or all of the teeth.

Van Hooffs (1972) observations of a semi- captive chimpanzee colony provide further in- formation about the functions of these facial dis- plays. In general, he found the silent bared-teeth display occurred largely in afftnitive situations, while the relaxed open-mouth display occurred predominantly during play. More specifically, van Hooff found three subtypes of the silent bared-teeth display associated with affinitive behaviors to varying degrees. The vertical bared-

127 Ethology and Sociobiology 2: 127-133 (1981) 0 Elsevier North Holland, Inc.. 1981 52 Vanderbilt Ave., New York. New York 10017

0162-3095/81/030127-07$02.50

P. Goldenthal, R. E. Johnston, and R. E. Kraut

teeth display, the least conspicuous of the three, involves vertical, but not horizontal lip retrac- tion. The horizontal bared-teeth display in- volves strong horizontal, as well as vertical, lip retraction; teeth and gums are exposed, but the mouth itself is closed. The open-mourh bared- teeth display combines the features of the hor- izontal bared-teeth display with a widely opened mouth. Van Hooff (1972) found the open-mouth bared-teeth display to be strongly associated with aftinitive behaviors, whereas the horizontal type seemed more strongly associated with sub- mission. Young, subordinate, chimpanzees fre- quently used this display when frightened or threatened by older, more dominant animals (van Hooff, 1962, 1972). In this context that dis- play seems to defuse hostility or agression, and so to appease the dominant animal, Van Hooff (1962) also suggests that in other situations more dominant animals may use these displays to re- assure frightened subordinates.

Van Hooff (1972) argues that human smiling and laughter vary along at least two morpholog- ical dimensions, and that their extreme forms, the broad smile and the wide-mouth laugh are behaviorally, as well as morphologically, ho- mologous to the silent bared-teeth display and the relaxed open-mouth display, respectively. Some writers have described frequently occur- ring variations of laughter and smiling. Grant (1969), for example, describes eight distinct smile types ranging from the simple smile, in which the lips are drawn up and back while still totally covering the teeth, to the broad smile, in which both upper and lower teeth are visible. Brannigan and Humphries (1972) describe ten smile types, including the simple smile and broad smile. In van Hooff s (1972) model, these facial displays are described as involving greater or lesser amounts of teeth baring and mouth opening. He proposes that more teeth baring communicates a friendly or nonhostile attitude, while more mouth opening communicates greater degrees of playfulness. Thus the broad smile is proposed as a behavioral homologue of the silent bared-teeth display, the wide-mouth laugh as the behavioral homologue of the relaxed open-mouth display.

Smiling, then, may sometimes represent, not diminished laughter, but rather a desire for frien- dliness, social attachment, or appeasement. We hypothesized that smiling is often behaviorally homologous to the appeasement displays of non-

human primates. In each of the two field studies described here, situations in which people oc- casionally apologize were manipulated to in- crease the number of apologizers in order to study their nonverbal behaviors. In each study, recording the number of people uttering verbal apologies served as a validity check on the ma- nipulation.

STUDY 1: SHOPPERS IN A CAMPUS STORE

Methods Store customers who mistakenly ask another customer for assistance, as if that person were a clerk, are often embarrassed and apologetic. In order to increase the frequency of these social mistakes, a confederate replaced the regular clerk in a small sundries shop located on a uni- versity campus. While the real clerk sat approx- imately 2.5 m behind the counter, the confed- erate stood directly at the counter reading, and so appeared to be the clerk.

In the experimental condition, when the cus- tomer approached the confederate, the confed- erate looked up as if surprised, said that he was not the clerk, and that the clerk was “over there.” In the control condition, the confederate acted as if he were really a clerk, getting desired items and taking the customer’s money. In nei- ther condition did the confederate smile or ini- tiate social interaction with the customer. These two conditions were randomized using a coin flip before each interaction. There were 99 in- teractions of which 71 were videotaped. Due to physical constraints on the research, the re- mainder were recorded live using a paper and pencil checklist. The interaction between the two data collection methods and each of the de- pendent measures was statistically tested, using log-linear analysis, and found to be nonsignifi- cant.

The observer, whether coding live or from videotapes, recorded three types of smiles. Open-mouth smiles were defined as smiles in which the comers of the mouth are lifted up and drawn back, the mouth is open; teeth are usually only minimally visible. This display, then, is equivalent to the play face described by Bran- nigan and Humphries (1972) and parallels the relaxed open-mouth display discussed by van Hooff (1972). Teeth-show smiles were defined as those in which the comers of the mouth are

Smiling and Appeasement 129

Table 1. Smiling and Apologizing Among Experimentals and Controls

Experimenrals Controls Treatment (T) Coding Method (M) T x M Behavior n = 62 n = 37 X2 X2 X2

Apologies 7 I 2.73” 2.63 0.48 Smiles (3 types combined) 22 3 IO.476 0.42 I .80

o p < 0.10 * p < 0.05

lifted up and drawn back, lips are parted to re- veal either upper and lower teeth, or upper teeth only, while teeth more or less meet. This display encompasses both the upper smile and the broad smile (Brannigan and Humphries, 1972), and parallels the horizontal bared-teeth display (van Hooff. 1972). Closed-mouth smiles were defined as those in which the corners of the mouth are retracted and lifted, without baring the teeth. This display is called the simple smile by Bran- nigan and Humphries (1972).

Observers also recorded the occurrences of verbal apologies (defined as statements of “I’m sorry,” or “Sorry”) to serve as a validity check on the manipulation. Reliabilities for two coders of the videotapes, both of whom were naive to the experimental manipulations and to its hy- potheses, were moderate; kappa values (Cohen, 1960) ranged from 0.57 to 0.80.

The data collected in this study, as well as in the second study presented here, were dicho- tomously measured. While the traditionally used x2 test of association allows one to test for main effects using data of this sort, it does not permit testing for interactions among the variables. Log-linear analysis (Bishop, Feinberg, and Hol- land, 1975; Kenny, 1976), however, permits test- ing both main effects and interactions among dichotomously measured variables. This pro- cedure yields least likelihood x’ values, which can be evaluated just as are the more familiar goodness of fit x’s.

Results The occurrences of apologies and smiles among experimental and control subjects are presented in Table I. First, it can be seen that the method of coding (live vs. videotape) did not system- atically affect the observed frequencies of smil- ing or of apologies, either as a main effect or as a Coding Method x Treatment interaction. The three degrees of freedom for smiling are a result of the coding scheme employed (no smile, teeth-

show smile, open-mouth smile, closed-mouth smile).

People believing that they had made social mistakes smiled more (3X/o) than did controls (8%), x2(3) = 10.47, p < 0.05. The proportions of smiles of the three types occurring in both conditions are presented in Table 2.

Although teeth show and closed mouth smiles predominated in the experimental condition, the Smile Type x Experimental Condition inter- action was tested using log-linear analysis and found to be nonsignificant.

Individuals who were led to believe that they had asked the wrong person for sales assistance apologized more (9%) than did controls (0.3%) x’(l) = 2.73, p < 0.10, suggesting that the ma- nipulation was successful in producing appease- ment behavior. It is interesting to note that the one control subject who did apologize did so while he fumbled in his pockets for change and that he also smiled.

STUDY 2: INTERRUPTED CONVERSATIONS

People commit social mistakes in a variety of social situations. While the first study encour- aged such mistakes, the design of the second study made such errors unavoidable. Many ac- ademic departments have rooms set aside for mail delivery to faculty, staff, and graduate stu- dents. Colleagues frequently meet while entering or leaving these mailrooms and linger in the vi- cinity of the doorway while talking. The pres- ence of people conversing in this manner makes interrupting them necessary for anyone wanting to enter the mailroom. This study was designed to increase the frequency of these interruptions

Table 2. Occurrences of Three Types of Smiles

Smile Type Experiment& Controls Open mouth smile 18.2% 33.3% Closed mouth smile 36.3% 33.3% Teeth show smile 45.4% 33.3%

P. Goldenthal, R. E. Johnston, and R. E. Kraut

and to study the behavior of the interrupters. As in the first study, we hypothesized that those making social mistakes, in this case interrupters, would verbally apologize more and smile more than noninterrupters. Pilot data suggested that interrupters tended to avoid eye contact with those they interrupted, and that they tended to look at the floor while walking through the door- ways. Based on these observations, and on van Hooff’s (1967) observation that appeasing chim- panzees sometimes look away from those they appease, we also hypothesized that this behavior would be more frequent among interrupters.

Methods In the experimental condition, two confederates stood in the doorway of one of two mailrooms in such a way as to block approximately one half of the doorway. These confederates were in- structed to engage in seemingly important con- versations, e.g., a conversation between a grad- uate student and her major professor about a paper to be submitted for publication.

In the control condition, the two confederates turned away from each other, so that they still blocked one-half of the doorway, but they were facing away from each other instead of toward each other as in the experimental condition. The two original confederates were then joined by two more who each stood next to one of the originals and engaged him or her in conversa- tion. In neither condition did confederates ini- tiate eye contact with or smile at subjects. There were five different pairs of confederates.

In Study 1 it was found that there was no significant difference in the frequency of the three types of smiles. For this reason, the three were combined and simplified as smile, defined as an occurence of any one of the three types of smiles: open mouth, closed mouth, or teeth show, defined earlier. This behavior was re- corded by five observers using a paper and pen- cil checklist for the 97 observed interaction se- quences. Two other behaviors were also recorded: excuse, a statement of “excuse me” or the equivalent, and looking down, the inclination of the subject’s gaze or head toward the floor.

The observers were aware of the hypotheses of the study and had received previous training in the observation and recording of the behaviors under study. In one location, the observers stood leaning against a counter. In the other, they sat in chairs in a lounge area immediately

adjacent to the mail delivery area. In each lo- cation, observers had an unobstructed view of the subjects walking through the doorway, and in both at least several individuals not involved in the study were present in the mailroom. At no time did anyone express any awareness of the manipulation or of the recording of behaviors by the observers.

Results The percentages of experimental and control subjects who excused themselves, smiled, and looked down are presented in Table 3, as are the results of the log-linear analysis used to test for main effects of, and interactions among, varia- bles.

Many more interrupters excused themselves (54%) than did controls (5%), x2 = 35.20, p < 0.001. Interrupters also looked down (32%) more often than controls (14%) xZ = 3.70 p = 0.05. While more interrupters (41%) than noninter- rupters (24%) smiled, this difference only tended toward significance. x2 = 3.25, p = 0.08.

One confederate pair produced many more excuses than most, while one pair produced less excuses than the others, x2(4) = 11.64, p < 0.05. There was also a significant Confederate x Treatment interaction for smiling, x’(4) = 9.34, p = 0.05, and for looking down x2(4) = 10.64, p < 0.05. For each of these behaviors, the dif- ferences were in the predicted direction for four of the five confederate pairs, with a reversal for the fifth pair accounting for the interaction. In general, then, interrupters smiled and looked down more than noninterrupters. At the same time, this behavior is clearly responsive to in- dividual differences in the people who are in- terrupted.

It is possible to examine the pattern of co- occurrences of smiling, looking down, and say- ing “excuse me” by computing gamma (Dar- lington, 1975) a measure of association between two behaviors.’ Gamma equals one when the less frequent behavior either always occurs or

t Any examination of the co-occurrence of two behaviors will be biased by the frequencies of the individual behaviors. Gamma (Yule’s Q) is a measure of association between two dichotomous variables which is unaffected by frequencies of individual variables. Computationally, if A. B, C. and D are the individual cell frequencies in a 2 x 2 contingency table, then gamma = AD - BUAD + BC. Using this formula, gamma will equal 1.00 if the more frequent behavior either always or never occurs with the less frequent behavior.

Smiling and Appeasement 131

Table 3. Behaviors of Interrupters and Non-Interrupters

Interrupters Noninterrupters Treatment (T) Confederate (C) TxC n = 54 n = 42 x2(I) x2(4) x2(4)

BEHAVIOR Smile tall subjects) by confederate pair

I 2 3 4 5

Excuse tall subjects) by confederate pair

I 2 3 4 5

Look DOWI (all subjects) by confederate pair

I 2 3 4 5

41% 24% 3.25" 3.53 9.34b

35 0 40 38 38 25 75 II 40 57 54 5

65 IO 20 0 62 12

I00 0 60 0 32 I4

29 IO 33 25 I2 0

0 33 60 0

35.20' ll.&th 4.95

3.706 5.34 1O.64b

* p = 0.08 * p r 0.05 'p io.001

never occurs with the more frequent behavior. People who smiled rarely looked down. Only 3 of 32 subjects who smiled looked down, and only 3 of 23 who looked down also smiled, gamma = -0.63, x2 = 5.6, p < 0.05. Examination of the patterns of association between looking down and saying “excuse me” and between smiling and saying “excuse me” showed no sig- nificant relationships. These patterns suggest that smiling and looking down may be alternative responses to feeling that one has committed a social mistake. In some situations an erring in- dividual may be able to avoid all further social interaction by avoiding eye contact. At other times, or in other situations, such avoidance may be impossible. In these cases people may smile apologetically.

DISCUSSION

The data from these studies clearly support the hypothesis that smiling does occur in some in- terpersonally unpleasant or awkward situations, and that such smiling seems to carry a message of appeasement or apology. People made to feel that they had violated social norms seemed to feel apologetic. Given the stringent definition of

an apology in the first study, it is likely that many more people exposed to that manipulation felt apologetic, but expressed it in other, non- verbal, ways. A large percentage of these people smiled in accordance with our predictions. This difference in smiling was not associated with a corresponding increase in talking. In the first study experimental subjects typically turned away immediately after learning of their “mis- take” while the interaction between the confed- erate and control subjects continued briefly dur- ing the exchange of goods and cash. In the second study confederates did not speak to sub- jects at all.

The message of a display such as smiling may best be understood by examining the common elements of the situations in which the display occurs (see Smith, 1965, 1968, 1969). Several other investigators have found that smiling oc- curs in situations that are not overtly happy, such as situations in which an individual wants to establish friendly relations (Blurton Jones, 1972; Grant, 1969; Kendon and Ferber, 1973; Kraut and Johnston, 1979; Mackey, 1976) to seek approval (Rosenfeld, 1965). to deceive an- other (Mehrabian, 1971), or to deny unpleasant feelings (Schultz and Barefoot, 1972). It also appears that submissive children are more likely

132 P. Goldenthal, R. E. Johnston, and R. E. Kraut

to smile when initiating interactions with dom- inant peers than vice versa (Blurton Jones, 1972). The common element underlying these situations, and thus the message of the smile, appears to be nonhostility, friendliness, or social acceptability.

Although we have made a strong case that smiles can be appeasing, there are other possible explanations for the observed pattern of results. Ekman (1972) suggests that smiles, in addition to serving as emotional expressions of happiness or as signals of compliance or agreement, may also occasionally be used, in culturally learned ways, as masks of socially less acceptable emo- tions. Perhaps experimental subjects in these field experiments felt inconvenienced, annoyed, irritated, or impatient, and smiled, not to ap- pease, but instead to mask their angry feelings. These two views of smiling are in a sense com- plementary; “masking” smiles may well facili- tate friendly interactions by suppressing hostil- ity. The question, then, is not which of these approaches is the “correct” one to take in un- derstanding smiling in one specific situation. It is, rather, which approach to the question will most easily explain the communicative role of smiling in the wide variety of situations in which it occurs.

Van Hooff s (1967) observations that people generally interpret smiling as indicating a desire to be friendly provides a framework for inte- grating the various findings about the social functions of smiling in both human and nonhu- man primates. The functions suggested above- greetings, initiating social interactions with in- dividuals of higher status, seeking approval-all are particular ways of indicating friendliness or nonhostility. When two individuals have already clearly established friendly interaction patterns, smiling can serve to reaftirm that friendship. When a relationship’s position on a friendli- ness-hostility continuum is less clear, smiling can help shift the interaction away from hostility and toward friendliness. The results of these studies provide support for van Hooff s (1972) hypothesis concerning the behavioral homology between human and nonhuman primate facial displays, and demonstrate the utility of an eth- ological approach to understanding the inter- personal functions of facial expressions.

This article is based on a master’s thesis presented to the Department of Psychology, Cornell University.

The authors thank Louis Zambello for the undergrad- uate paper which drew their attention to clerk-customer interactions, Robert Grosse for assistance during the studies, and David Kenny and Larry Lavoie for help with data analyses. This research was supported in part by NIH grant 30041 to Robert Kraut. A brief ver- sion of this paper was presented at the meeting of The Eastern Psychological Association, Hartford, April, 1980.

REFERENCES

Bishop, Y.M.M., Feinberg, S.E.. Holland, P. W. Discrete Multi\~uriare Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1975.

Blurton Jones. N.G. Non-verbal communication in children. In Non-Verbal Communication. R.A. Hinde (Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1972, pp. 271-296.

Brannigan, C.R.. Humphries. D.A. Human non-ver- bal behavior, a means of communication. In Efh- ological Studies of Child Behavior. N.B. Blurton

Jones (Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. pp. 36-64.

Charlesworth, W.R.. Kreutzer, M.A. Facial expres- sions in infants and children. In Danvin and Facial Espression, P. Ekman (Ed.). New York: Academic Press, 1973. pp. 91-162.

Cohen, J. A coefftcient of agreement for nominal scales. Educurionul und Psychological Measure- ment 20: 37-46 ( 1960).

Darlington, R.B. Radicals and Sqrtures. Ithaca: Logan Hill Press, 1975.

Darwin, C. The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animuls. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1965. (Originally published. London: John Murray, 1872).

Ekman. P. Universals and Cultural differences in fa- cial expressions or emotion. In Nebrusku Sympos- ium in Morivution, 1971, J. Cole (Ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1972. pp. 207-283.

-. Cross-Cultural Studies of Facial Expression. In DarGn and Facial Expression. P. Ekman (Ed.).

New York: Academic Press, 1973, pp. 169-220. -., Friesen, W.V., Ellsworth, P. Emotion in rhe

Hutnun Face: Gaidelines for Research and an In- tegration ofFindings. New York: Pergamon, 1972.

Grant, E.C. Human facial expression. Man 4: 525-536 t 1969).

Hooff, J.A.R.A.M. van Facial expressions in higher primates. Symposium of the Zoological Society of London 8: 97-125 (1962).

-. The facial displays of the Catarrhine Monkeys and Apes. In Primate Ethology, P. Morris (Ed.). Chicago: Aldine Press. 1967, pp. 7-69.

-. A comparative approach to the phylogeny of laughter and smiling. In Non-Verbal Communica- rion. R.A. Hinde (Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 209-241.

Smiling and Appeasement 133

Kendon, A., Ferber, A.A. A description of some human greetings. In Studies in the Behavior ofSo- cial Inferaction, A. Kendon (Ed.). Bloomington: Research Center for Language Semiotic Studies, 1973, pp. 115-178.

Kenny, D.A. Data analyses in the social psychological experiment. Representative Research in Social Psychology 7: 120-132 (1976).

Kraut, R.E., Johnston, R.E. Social and emotional messages of smiling: An ethological approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37: 1539-1553 (1979).

Mackey, W.C. Parameters of the smile as a social sig- nal. The Journal of Generic Psychology 129: 125-130 (1976).

Mehrabian, A. Non-verbal betrayal of feeling. Journal

of Experimental Research in Personality 5: 64-73 (1971).

Rosenfeld, H.M. Instrumental affiliative functions of facial and gestural expressions. Journal of Person- ality and Social Psychology 4: 65-72 (1%5).

Schultz, R., Barefoot, J. Non-verbal responses and affiliative conflict theory. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 13: 237-243 (1974).

Smith, W.J. Message, meaning and context in ethol- ogy. American Naruralisr 99: 405407 (I%S).

-. Message-meaning analysis. In Animal Commu- nicnrion, T.A. Sebeok (Ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968, pp. 44-60.

-. Messages of vertebrate communication. Science 165: 145-150 (1%9).