Jared Martin

• University of Wisconsin–Madison

Through their nuanced ability to reinforce, reassure, and judge, smiles accomplish many tasks in daily interactions. Do male- and female-identifying individuals use these smiles equally? Although American women smile more often than men overall, it is possible that gender differences in smile behavior are more nuanced. For instance, since it is mor...

Laughter and smiles co-occur and accomplish similar communicative tasks. Certain smiles and laughter elicit positive affect in the sender and the recipient, serving as social rewards. Other smiles and laughter lack this positivity but retain a message of harmlessness and affiliation that lubricates the interaction. And finally, some smiles and laug...

We investigated the effects of different types of smiles on the perception of uncooperative or untrustworthy behaviour. In five studies, participants assigned to one group played an economic game with a representative of another group. In an initial round, the representative acted uncooperatively by favouring their group and then displayed a domina...

Cultural context shapes individuals' valuation of emotions. Although studies have documented cultural differences in beliefs about the utility of negative emotions, little is known about how such cultural valuation is associated with physiological stress responses. In the present work, we examined whether East Asians and European Americans differ i...

Through their nuanced ability to reinforce, reassure, and judge, smiles accomplish many tasks in daily interactions. A recent approach proposes that there are at least three distinct types of smiles: reward, affiliation, and dominance, which are predicted to take different physical forms and serve unique functions in social communication. Although...

The present work advances the science of the smile by investigating how perceivers mentally represent this heterogenous expression. Across both perception- and production-based tasks, we report evidence that perceivers mentally represent reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles as distinct categories associated with specific behaviors, social cont...

Others’ facial expressions can influence whether we trust them. For example, smiles tend to elicit positive impressions and increased cooperation. But how are smiles perceived when displayed by someone who has violated our trust? Here, we investigated the effects of reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles displayed after intergroup trust violatio...

Recognising a facial expression is more difficult when the expresser's body conveys incongruent affect. Existing research has documented such interference for universally recognisable bodily expressions. However, it remains unknown whether learned, conventional gestures can interfere with facial expression processing. Study 1 participants (N = 62)...

Recognition of affect expressed in the face is disrupted when the body expresses an incongruent affect. Existing research has documented such interference for universally recognizable bodily expressions. However, it remains unknown whether learned, conventional gestures can interfere with facial expression processing. Study 1 participants (N = 62)...

When people are being evaluated, their whole body responds. Verbal feedback causes robust activation in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. What about nonverbal evaluative feedback? Recent discoveries about the social functions of facial expression have documented three morphologically distinct smiles, which serve the functions of reinfo...

The human smile is highly variable in both its form and the social contexts in which it is displayed. A social-functional account identifies three distinct smile expressions defined in terms of their effects on the perceiver: reward smiles reinforce desired behavior; affiliation smiles invite and maintain social bonds; and dominance smiles manage h...

Recent work has identified the physical features of smiles that accomplish three tasks fundamental to human social living: rewarding behavior, establishing and managing affiliative bonds, and negotiating social status. The current work extends the social functional account to laughter. Participants (N = 762) rated the degree to which reward, affili...

A smile is the most frequent facial expression, but not all smiles are equal. A social-functional account holds that smiles of reward, affiliation, and dominance serve basic social functions, including rewarding behavior, bonding socially, and negotiating hierarchy. Here, we characterize the facial-expression patterns associated with these three ty...