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Perceptions of ability and affect as a function of smiling and gender
Abstract
Perceptions of people on-the-job as a function of smiling and gender were examined. Forty male and forty female undergraduate students viewed slides of same- and mixed-gender confederate dyads taken at their places of work. On each slide, the face of only one member of the dyad could be seen. The visible face was smiling in half of the slides and not smiling in the other half. After viewing each slide, subjects completed questionnaires in which they rated confederates' ability, affect, and presumed job level. Contrary to expectations, smiling increased evaluations of confederates' ability. In accordance with expectations, gender was an influential variable; males were seen as more able and as holding higher level jobs than females overall, and females were judged to be more considerate than males. Further, interactions and post hoc analyses of the means indicated that evaluations of and by females were more influenced by smiling than evaluations of and by males were.
Subject Area
Occupational psychology|Social psychology
Recommended Citation
Brown, Carolyn Shaw, "Perceptions of ability and affect as a function of smiling and gender" (1991). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9207368.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9207368