Unmasking smiles: the influence of culture and intensity on interpretations of smiling expressions

A smile can communicate many things: happiness, affiliative intent, or a person’s social status. This means that perceivers need to interpret what a given smile might mean. In the current study, we hypothesized that the interpretation of smiles is influenced by the culture of both the person smiling and of the perceiver, as well as by the intensity of the smile. Chinese and Dutch perceivers rated positivity, negativity, authenticity, and politeness for isolated (Experiment 1) and minimal-context (Experiment 2) low- and high-intensity smiles produced by Chinese and Dutch expressers. Largely consistent with our hypotheses, the culture of the expresser and the intensity of the smile consistently influenced smile interpretation: Dutch smiles were interpreted as more positive and authentic, and as less negative and polite, than were Chinese smiles; high-intensity smiles were interpreted as more positive and authentic, and less negative and polite, than were low-intensity smiles. However, contrary to our predictions, we did not find a systematic effect of the culture of the perceiver on smile interpretation. Together, these findings provide new evidence for the impact of culture and smile intensity on the interpretation of the social and affective meaning of smiles.