Diane S. Berry

Lying Words: Predicting Deception from Linguistic Styles

Telling lies often requires creating a story about an experience or attitude that does not exist. As a result, false stories may be qualitatively different from true stories. The current project investigated the features of linguistic style that distinguish between true and false stories. In an analysis of five independent samples, a computer-based text analysis program correctly classified liars and truth-tellers at a rate of 67% when the topic was constant and a rate of 61% overall. Compared to truth-tellers, liars showed lower cognitive complexity, used fewer self-references and other-references, and used more negative emotion words.

Perceiving character in faces: The impact of age-related craniofacial changes on social perception.

Despite considerable evidence indicating that our perceptions of peoples psychological attributes are strongly tied to their facial appearance, there has been almost no systematic and theoretically guided research on this topic. The ecological approach to social perception (McArthur & Baron, 1983) holds that facial characteristics may influence impressions if they typically reveal psychological attributes whose detection is important for adaptive functioning. For example, the facial characteristics that identify infants should reveal their helplessness. The ecological approach further predicts that a strong attunement to adaptively significant facial characteristics may be overgeneralized. In particular, it is hypothesized that adults with immature facial qualities are perceived to have childlike psychological attributes. The research we review provides strong support for this prediction. More specifically, adults with various childlike facial qualities are perceived to afford more warmth, more submission, more honesty less physical strength, and more naivete than those with more mature faces. Implications of the ecological approach for further research on face perception are discussed.

Nonverbal and Verbal Emotional Expression and Health

The spontaneous nonverbal expression of emotion is related to immediate reductions in autonomic nervous system activity. Similar changes in specific autonomic channels occur when individuals are encouraged to verbally express their emotions. Indeed, these physiological changes are most likely to occur among individuals who are either verbally or nonverbally highly expressive. These data suggest that when individuals must actively inhibit emotional expression, they are at increased risk for a variety of health problems. Several experiments are summarized which indicate that verbally expressing traumatic experiences by writing or talking improves physical health, enhances immune function, and is associated with fewer medical visits. Although less research is available regarding nonverbal expression, it is also likely that the nonverbal expression of emotion bears some relation to health status. We propose that the effectiveness of many common expressive therapies (e.g., art, music, cathartic) would be enhanced if clients are encouraged to both express their feelings nonverbally and to put their experiences into words.

What's in a Face?: Facial Maturity and the Attribution of Legal Responsibility

Recent research has provided considerable evidence that when facial appearance is the only information provided about a stimulus person, babyfaced adults are perceived to have more childlike qualities than mature-faced adults who are equal in perceived age and attractiveness. The present study utilized a simulated trial format to assess the impact of facial maturity on social perceptions in a more complex situation in which other meaningful information about the stimulus person was available. The fact that babyfaced adults are perceived to be more naive than those with mature features led to the prediction that a babyfaced defendant would be more often found guilty of an offense resulting from negligent actions than would a mature-faced defendant. The fact that babyfaced adults are perceived to be more honest than those with mature features yielded the prediction that babyfaced defendants would less often be perceived as guilty of charges involving intentional criminal behavior. Finally, when defendants were known to be guilty of a negligent crime, it was predicted that subjects would recommend less severe punishment for babyfaced defendants than for mature-faced ones. The pattern of results supported the predictions.

Were the Physiognomists Right? Personality Correlates of Facial Babyishness

Research has revealed that feature babyishness exerts a powerful impact on perceptions of faces. Whereas previous work has focused on the perceptual consequences of such variations in facial configuration, the present study examined the psychological ramifications of exhibiting a particular facial appearance. Specifically, we asked whether baby faced adults perceive themselves in the same way that others do. Facial photographs of 24 male and 24 female stimulus persons were rated on babyishness, physical attractiveness, and several trait dimensions. Facial babyishness was positively correlated with appearance-based perceptions of physical and social weakness and approachability. The stimulus persons also completed several personality scales and rated their own facial babyishness and attractiveness. Relationships between objective and self-ratings of baby facedness and personality measures were revealed, and these paralleled impressions formed about the stimulus persons on the basis of facial appearance alone. Conditions under which a congruence between self and appearance-based perceptions are most likely to develop are discussed.

Personality, Nonverbal Behavior, and Interaction Quality in Female Dyads

Female dyads were videotaped while they took part in an initial social interaction. Participants subsequently evaluated their encounter along several qualitative dimensions. Independent observers also rated the interactions, and a variety of behaviors were coded from the videotapes. Dyad-level analyses revealed that agreeableness, openness, and extraversion predicted observers’ evaluations of interaction quality. Individual-level analyses further indicated that agreeableness and extraversion predicted participants’ perceptions of interaction quality. Links between personality and social behavior were revealed as well. Variations in visual attention and body position accounted for the relations found between dyads’ levels of agreeableness and independent observers’ evaluations of interaction quality. Visual attention further mediated the relation revealed between openness and observers’ ratings of quality. This work reveals that self-reports of personality can reliably predict the course of social interaction and identifies some specific behaviors though which this may occur.

Linguistic Bases of Social Perception

Target persons were videotaped while engaged in an interview. A text analysis program was used to ascertain the frequency with which they employed negative emotion words, positive emotion words, words reflecting cognitive operations, self-referents, presenttense verbs, negations, and unique words in their verbalizations. Judges viewed the videotapes and evaluated the target persons on a number of social perception dimensions. The language dimensions accounted for significant and substantial proportions of the variance in impressions of the target persons beyond that explained by traditionally studied person perception variables such as physical attractiveness, nonverbal expressiveness, and facial maturity. The results indicate the critical role that language plays in social perception and interaction.

What can a moving face tell us

This research assessed the impact of facial motion on perceptions of age-related person qualities. Ss judged the power of point-light displays of the faces of children, middle-aged adults, and elderly adults. Ratings were obtained of (a) dynamic displays filmed while the stimulus persons were reciting the alphabet, (b) dynamic displays filmed, while the stimulus persons engaged in an interaction, and (c) static versions of the displays. Facial age exerted no effect on the perceived power of nondynamic displays. However, moving displays of childrens faces were judged to be less powerful than were those of adults. Differences in perceived age could not explain these effects. The implications of these data for the developing area of social event perception are discussed.

Attractiveness, attraction, and sexual selection: Evolutionary perspectives on the form and function of physical attractiveness

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews recent empirical advances that in turn explain origin of attractiveness preferences. It discusses several evolutionary models of human social behavior and their predictions regarding the function of attractiveness. It also evaluates the ability of these models to account for recent findings in the attractiveness literature. Further, the chapter examines a number of questions and implications of the applications from an evolutionary perspective. The chapter concludes by addressing the potential criticisms of an evolutionary theory of physical attractiveness. Many social scientists believe that attractiveness lies in the eye of the beholder. However, consensus, which refers to the extent to which ratings of an individuals attractiveness provided by different judges converge, is typically assessed by examining whether different people rank order the attractiveness of a particular set of targets similarly. Three types of consensus include within-culture or within-ethnic consensus, within-culture or cross-ethnic consensus, and cross-cultural or cross-ethnic agreement.

Vocal attractiveness and vocal babyishness: Effects on stranger, self, and friend impressions

Ratings of the attractiveness and babyishness of the voices of 124 stimulus persons were obtained. These were compared to impressions provided by judges on the basis of vocal information only; self-descriptions provided by the stimulus persons; and descriptions of the stimulus persons provided by close friends. The vocal attractiveness stereotype was generally replicated, and the effects of vocal attractiveness and babyishness on impressions were found to be independent of one another. Sex differences in the impact of vocal attractiveness on perceptions were also revealed. Analyses did not reveal an impact of vocal attractiveness on self or friend ratings.