Telling lies often requires creating a story about an experience or attitude that does not exist. As a result, false stories may be qualitatively different from true stories. The current project investigated the features of linguistic style that distinguish between true and false stories. In an analysis of five independent samples, a computer-based text analysis program correctly classified liars and truth-tellers at a rate of 67% when the topic was constant and a rate of 61% overall. Compared to truth-tellers, liars showed lower cognitive complexity, used fewer self-references and other-references, and used more negative emotion words.

We conducted a comprehensive analysis of assortative mating (i.e., the similarity between wives and husbands on a given characteristic) in a newlywed sample. These newlyweds showed (a) strong similarity in age, religiousness, and political orientation; (b) moderate similarity in education and verbal intelligence; (c) modest similarity in values; and (d) little similarity in matrix reasoning, self-and spouse-rated personality, emotional experience and expression, and attachment. Further analyses established that similarity was not simply due to background variables such as age and education and reflected initial assortment (i.e., similarity at the time of marriage) rather than convergence (i.e., increasing similarity with time). Finally, marital satisfaction primarily was a function of the rater's own traits and showed little relation to spousal similarity.

Physical measurements and subjective ratings of various facial features were obtained for 20 adult male stimulus faces. The faces were also rated on five personality dimensions, physical attractiveness, age, and babyfacedness. The physical measurements of large, round eyes, high eyebrows, and a small chin each yielded the perception of a babyish facial appearance, and a weighted linear composite derived from the measures of eye size and chin width accounted for 57% of the variance in ratings of babyfacedness. Both this measured composite and subjective babyfacedness ratings were positively correlated with perceptions of a male stimulus person's naivete, honesty, kindness, and warmth. Analyses revealed that these relations were not attributable to the effects of perceived age or attractiveness. The results are discussed within a theoretical framework, which suggests that the adaptive value of recognizing natural covariations between certain appearance cues and behavioral affordances may provide an explanation for some appearance-based stereotyping.

Despite considerable evidence indicating that our perceptions of people's psychological attributes are strongly tied to their facial appearance, there has been almost no systematic and theoretically guided research on this topic. The ecological approach to social perception (McArthur & Baron, 1983) holds that facial characteristics may influence impressions if they typically reveal psychological attributes whose detection is important for adaptive functioning. For example, the facial characteristics that identify infants should reveal their helplessness. The ecological approach further predicts that a strong attunement to adaptively significant facial characteristics may be overgeneralized. In particular, it is hypothesized that adults with immature facial qualities are perceived to have childlike psychological attributes. The research we review provides strong support for this prediction. More specifically, adults with various childlike facial qualities are perceived to afford more warmth, more submission, more honesty less physical strength, and more naivete than those with more mature faces. Implications of the ecological approach for further research on face perception are discussed. The countenance is the reflection of the soul. (Cicero) Although most modern psychologists eschew the belief that character can be read from the face, this view has an ancient and distinguished history. It is found in the works of ancient philosophers like Aristotle, who described at length the facial signs of strength and weakness, genius and stupidity, timidity and boldness. It is also found in the works of great writers like Shakespeare, whose extensive use of physiognomic description attests to his conviction that the face reveals the inner person as well as his confidence that his readers would understand these correspondences. Although we have no evidence concerning how common the belief in facial cues to character was in Shakespeare's time, in modern times this supposition seems to be quite widespread. The reliance on physical appearance in descriptions of other people occurs at an early age (Livesley & Bromsley, 1973) and although psychological descriptions increase as a person matures, physical qualities continue to play a central role in our judgments of character. For instance, Liggett (1974) reported a survey of university students that revealed that over 90% believed there are important facial guides to character. Fiske and Cox (1979) further demonstrated that the belief in facial guides to character has an impact on behavior. When people were We would like to thank Jim Todd and Tom Alley for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript, and Susan Fiske for sharing with us her rare copy of LeBarr's (1922) "Why You Are What You Are."

Two studies explored the relations of positive and negative affect (PA and NA) to social interaction. In Study 1, unacquainted dyads were surreptitiously videotaped as they participated in a 6-min interaction. Participants then evaluated the quality of the interaction. Independent observers also rated the videotaped interactions. Trait PA was positively related to both participant and observer evaluations of interaction quality. In Study 2, undergraduates kept diaries of their social interactions for 1 week. PA was again related to interaction quality. Both PA and NA were positively related to the number of interactions in which participants engaged, and the amount of time spent engaged in social contact, although different types of social encounters produced these relations. Psychologists have long been interested in individual differences in people's self-described emotional experience. Research has revealed that some people report experiencing greater amounts of positive emotions than do others and are typically referred to as high-positive-affect (or high-PA) individuals. People who are high in positive affect are, for example, consistently more likely to describe themselves as enthusiastic, confident, and excited than are people who are low in positive affect. On the other hand, some individuals' daily lives are characterized by greater amounts of negative affective states than are others, and they are often referred to as high-negative-affect (or high-NA) people. For example, people who are high in NA are more likely to describe themselves as guilty, fearful, and nervous than are low-NA individuals. Although there are fluctuations in the levels of positive or negative affect a given person experiences at different points in time, the stability of self-reports of NA and PA is impressive (e.g., Watson, 1988a, 1988b). In sum, there appear to be trait like interindividual differences in people's typical self-reported levels of NA and PA. These individual differences in trait NA and PA also seem to underlie the personality dimensions of neuroticism and extraversion. In particular, self-report measures of NA and neuroticism have been repeatedly demonstrated to be highly correlated with one another but unrelated to measures of either positive affect or extraversion. Similarly, PA and extraversion are strongly related but are uncorrelated with either NA or neurot