Examining the Effect of Smile Intensity on Age Perceptions

Abstract

Research has demonstrated the positive effects of smiles on interpersonal perceptions of attractiveness, likability, and friendliness. A possible mechanism underlying the effects of smiles is babyfacedness. Four studies were conducted with 1,235 participants. In Study 1, 646 participants were assigned to one of the six levels of smile intensity and responded to the measures of age perception and perceived babyfacedness. Compared to the neutral expression, the maximal smile reduced age estimations and this effect was mediated by perceived babyfacedness. In Study 2, 59 respondents' responses indicated that a maximal smile reduced the perception of age. In Study 3, 318 respondents estimated the age of models in different sex and levels of smile intensity. Maximal smiles reduced age estimations. In Study 4, 125 students and 87 non-students were randomly assigned to one of the three levels of smile intensity and provided age estimations. Replicating previous findings, maximal smiles reduced age estimations. Consistent results emerged from the various contexts, models, and samples, as well as in a pooled analysis.

Be Happy Not Sad for Your Youth: The Effect of Emotional Expression on Age Perception

“…In support of our second hypothesis, we also found that positive affect, specifically happiness, biased age judgments such that happy faces were less often labeled as old compared to neutral at the upper age levels (ages 40 ~ 65)—a rightward-shift in the psychometric function (i.e., favoring younger judgments). This supports the findings of previous research that have found an underestimation of age when a happy emotion was expressed [ 7 , 12 ], not an overestimation of age [ 27 ]. To note, the same ability of emotional expression to bias middle-range, ambiguous age judgments was also found during practice test trials which used African and South Asian facial identities ( S1B Fig ), suggesting that our findings were not limited to the specific facial stimuli used in the main task.…”

“…In other words, sad faces are expected to decrease the age at which a face is considered old based on age-related stereotype attitudes associating negative emotions with older age [ 13 ]. In a similar way, happy faces are expected to increase this perceptual threshold compared to neutral faces and show a bias towards being perceived as younger due to their positive expressivity as has been conceptually shown in other research [ 7 , 12 ]. We also hypothesize that perceptual judgment shifts by emotional expressions would be accompanied by increased reaction times for young and old categorization that reflect additional cognitive resource deployment for emotional decoding in the age-decision process.…”

“…Therefore, this counterintuitive finding may reflect an idiosyncratic effect of smile-associated wrinkles in younger adults rather than representing a general effect of positive emotional expressions on age perception in a continuum of aging process from younger adulthood to older adulthood of one identical individual. On the other hand, Wang and colleagues (2015) also used photographed images and found that how babyish a face looked mediated the relationship between a smiling expression and age underestimation [ 12 ]. However, our study, using computer-generated, systematically manipulated images, was able to eliminate any potential variations in babyish features and aging rates of individual identities and thus provides a new perspective from previous research.…”

“…Indeed, smiling makes people appear friendlier and more attractive than displaying a neutral expression [ 11 ], which parallels how younger adults are perceived more positively than older. Smiling also has been found to be associated with appearing to have a babyish face, which also impacts judgments towards a younger age [ 12 ]. Although intuition from experience and evidence from aging stereotype literature tells us that a positive facial expression makes us look younger than we really are and negative facial expression makes us look older, surprisingly little empirical evidence exists to explain how age-irrelevant emotional expressions bias subjective age perception.…”

How Old Do I Look? Exploring the Facial Cues of Age in a Tasked Eye-Tracking Study

“…All photographs were taken in repose as research has shown that smiling influences one's apparent age. 20,21 Photographs were presented in a random order for each participant.…”