The Effect of Smiling and of Head Tilting on Person Perception

This study investigated the effect of smiling and of head tilting on person perception. Brazilian undergraduates (N = 322) judged a slide of a male or female stimulus person, smiling or not, and with the head tilted or not. The independent variables were (a) subject's gender, (b) stimulus person's gender; (c) head posture (tilted vs. upright), and (d) facial expression (no smile, closed smile, upper smile, or broad smile). The dependent variables were 12 adjective pairs for judging personality traits on a 7-point semantic differential scale. Adding a smile resulted generally in more favorable perceptions of the stimulus persons. Head posture had a weaker effect than smiling. Smiling produced generally positive evaluations, whereas head tilting led to negative evaluations on several traits.