research summary for psychology

Short Report

Adaptive Responses to Social Exclusion Social Rejection Improves Detection of Real and Fake Smiles Michael J. Bernstein, Steven G. Young, Christina M. Brown, Donald F. Sacco, and Heather M. Claypool

Miami University

Being excluded from social relationships poses numerous im-

mediate and long-term threats (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995).

Consequently, it is not surprising that people are sensitive to cues

that indicate potential rejection (Pickett & Gardner, 2005). For

example, individuals who are dispositionally high in need to

belong are better than others at identifying facial expressions and

vocal tones (Pickett, Gardner, & Knowles, 2004), and ostracized

participants have better memory for socially relevant information

than do nonostracized participants (Gardner, Pickett, & Brewer,

2000). In both cases, individuals either fearing rejection or

suffering actual rejection show increased attention to social cues.

Facial expressions of emotion can act as such social cues.

A Duchenne smile, for example, involves the automatic

activation of two facial muscles in response to the experience of

pleasure and is generally considered a ‘‘true’’ smile (Ekman,

Davidson, & Friesen, 1990), indicative of cooperation and

affiliation (Brown & Moore, 2002). In contrast, non-Duchenne,

or ‘‘masking,’’ smiles can conceal the experience of negative

emotions (Ekman, Friesen, & O’Sullivan, 1988). Knowing

whether a facial expression is conveying an honest affiliation

signal should help rejected individuals identify targets who are

likely to offer the greatest opportunity for reconnection.

Although research has shown that individuals with greater

belongingness needs (Pickett et al., 2004) are more accurate at

discriminating among true, diagnostic facial-expression signals

(e.g., discriminating between expressions of anger and happi-

ness), no research has examined the extent to which rejected

individuals are able to determine whether the expression being

identified is genuine in the first place. Although being able to

identify the qualitative emotional category of a facial display is

of value to socially excluded individuals, distinguishing real

from fake emotions seems especially important to ensure that

reaffiliation efforts are maximally distributed toward people

displaying genuine affiliative cues. Indeed, directing resources

toward an individual faking an affiliative display would likely be

a costly error for socially rejected individuals, who already find

themselves in a perilous situation. Accordingly, we hypothe-

sized that rejected individuals would show an enhanced ability

to discriminate between real and fake smiles, presumably

because they are more attuned than others to subtle social cues,

including those present in Duchenne smiles (involuntary signals

of cooperation) as opposed to non-Duchenne smiles (controlla-

ble and unreliable indicators of cooperation).

METHOD

Participants were randomly assigned to social-inclusion, social-

exclusion, or control conditions. They were then shown faces

exhibiting Duchenne or non-Duchenne smiles and were asked to

decide whether each was ‘‘real’’ or ‘‘fake.’’

Participants

Thirty-two undergraduates (17 females, 15 males) participated

in the study for course credit.

Materials

The facial stimuli were located on the BBC Science & Nature

Web site (BBC, n.d.). 1

Respondents were asked to watch 20 color

videos (approximately 4 s each) one at a time. Each depicted

an individual who had an initially neutral expression and then

smiled before returning to a neutral expression. Which faces

exhibited real/fake smiles remained constant for all partici-

pants. Thus, there were 20 faces, 10 of which were always

Address correspondence to Michael J. Bernstein, Department of Psychology, Psychology Building, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, e-mail: [email protected].

1 The faces were pretested for equivalency of attractiveness and positivity.

Ratings of neutral expressions of targets showing Duchenne smiles versus neutral expressions of targets showing non-Duchenne smiles revealed no differences (p > .2).

P S Y C H O L O G I C A L S C I E N C E

Volume 19—Number 10 981Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science

exhibiting real smiles and 10 of which were always exhibiting

fake smiles. Thirteen men and seven women were depicted in

the videos. 2

Procedure

Participants were informed that they were to perform two osten-

sibly unrelated tasks concerning memory and face perception.

The first was an essay task that constituted the manipulation of

social status. Participants, having been randomly assigned, wrote

about a time they felt ‘‘rejected or excluded,’’ a time they felt

‘‘accepted or included,’’ or their morning the day before the study

(control condition). This manipulation has been used previously

with success (e.g., Gardner et al., 2000). As a manipulation check,

participants responded to a scale assessing the degree to which

they felt a threat to their sense of belonging, a common measure

used to confirm the effectiveness of rejection manipulations

(Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000).

Finally, participants watched each video and indicated, on a

response sheet next to the computer, whether the smile was

‘‘genuine’’ or ‘‘fake.’’ Upon completion of this task, participants

responded to demographic questions before being probed for

suspicion, thanked, and debriefed.

RESULTS

Manipulation Check

To examine whether the manipulation of social rejection was

successful, we conducted a one-way between-subjects analysis of

variance (ANOVA) on the belongingness measure. Results indi-

cated that the manipulation had the intended effect (prep > .99);

rejected participants experienced a greater threat to their sense of

belonging.

Discrimination Scores

We calculated d0, a signal detection measure examining the

ability to discriminate stimuli—in this case, the ability to dis-

criminate Duchenne smiles from non-Duchenne smiles. This

measure simultaneously considers hits (correctly identifying a

Duchenne smile as genuine) and false alarms (incorrectly

identifying a non-Duchenne smile as genuine) in the calcula-

tion. The one-way ANOVA on these scores was significant,

F(2, 29) 5 5.63, prep 5 .97; compared with control participants

(M 5 1.05, SD 5 0.56) and included participants (M 5 1.34, SD

5 0.56), rejected participants (M 5 1.88, SD 5 0.62) exhibited

greater discriminability, t(29) 5 3.33, prep 5 .98, d 5 1.35, and

t(29) 5 2.12, prep 5 .92, d 5 0.87, respectively. Discrimination

ability did not differ between included and control participants

(p > .25; see Fig. 1).

There was no effect of target or participant sex. Thus, these

variables are not discussed further.

DISCUSSION

We found that socially rejected individuals have enhanced

ability to determine whether the ‘‘happy’’ facial expression of a

target individual is genuine (a true indication of an affiliative

opportunity) or deceptive (feigning the appearance of positive

affect). This suggests that motivation to reaffiliate increases

rejected individuals’ sensitivity to other social cues indicating

belongingness opportunities—specifically, facial displays that

are honest signals of cooperation and affiliation.

Although the results of the current study are congruent with

some of the rejection literature showing reaffiliative responses to

social exclusion (Lakin & Chartrand, 2005; Maner, DeWall,

Baumeister, & Schaller, 2007), these results are among the first

to show that rejection can lead to increases in performance at

a perceptual level, provided that the performance supports

opportunities for affiliation. Once rejected, people are left with a

strong desire to be accepted, which leads them toward interac-

tion partners with whom they might affiliate. Therefore, it seems

essential to detect legitimate signs of positivity that indicate

possible reaffiliation with other people. Otherwise, rejected

individuals could miss out on new chances for acceptance

or ‘‘waste’’ affiliation efforts on people who are not receptive.

Future research should examine whether other faked emotions

can be differentiated from true emotions, as well as how these

perceptual skills may guide subsequent behavioral choices.

REFERENCES

Baumeister, R.F., & Leary, M.R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for

interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529. BBC. (n.d.). Spot the fake smile. Retrieved October 1, 2007, from

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles

Brown, W.M., & Moore, C. (2002). Smile asymmetries and reputation

as reliable indicators of likelihood to cooperate: An evolutionary

0.5 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.3 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1

ControlInclusionExclusion

S en

si tiv

ity ( d'

)

Social Status

Fig. 1. Mean ability to discriminate (sensitivity, d0) Duchenne and non- Duchenne smiles as a function of social-status condition. Error bars in- dicate standard errors.

2 The stimuli included three minority-group individuals. Removing data for

these targets from analyses did not change any findings.

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Adaptive Responses to Social Exclusion

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Ekman, P., Davidson, R.J., & Friesen, W.V. (1990). The Duchenne

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Ekman, P., Friesen, W.V., & O’Sullivan, M. (1988). Smiles when lying.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 414–420. Gardner, W.L., Pickett, C.L., & Brewer, M.B. (2000). Social exclusion

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ory for social events. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 486–496.

Lakin, J.L., & Chartrand, T.L. (2005). Exclusion and nonconscious

behavioral mimicry. In K.D. Williams, J.P. Forgas, & W. von

Hippel (Eds.), The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying (pp. 279–296). New York: Psychology Press.

Maner, J.K., DeWall, C.N., Baumeister, R.F., & Schaller, M. (2007).

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Pickett, C.L., & Gardner, W.L. (2005). The social monitoring system:

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(RECEIVED 1/18/08; REVISION ACCEPTED 4/12/08)

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