Smile asymmetries and reputation as reliable indicators of likelihood to cooperate: An evolutionary analysis

Cooperating with individuals whose altruism is not motivated by genuine prosocial emotions could have been costly in ancestral division of labour partnerships. How do humans ‘know’ whether or not an individual has the prosocial emotions committing future cooperation? Frank (1988) has hypothesized two pathways for altruist-detection: (a) facial expressions of emotions signalling character; and (b) gossip regarding the target individual’s reputation. Detecting non-verbal cues signalling commitment to cooperate may be one way to avoid the costs of exploitation. Spontaneous smiles while cooperating may be reliable index cues because of the physiological constraints controlling the neural pathways mediating involuntary emotional expressions. Specifically, it is hypothesized that individuals whose help is mediated by a genuine sympathy will express involuntary smiles (which are observably different from posed smiles). To investigate this idea, 38 participants played dictator games (i.e. a unilateral resource allocation task) against cartoon faces with a benevolent emotional expression (i.e. concern furrows and smile). The faces were presented with information regarding reputation (e.g. descriptions of an altruistic character vs. a non-altruistic character). Half of the sample played against icons with symmetrical smiles (representing a spontaneous smile) while the other half played against asymmetrically smiling icons (representing a posed smile). Icons described as having altruistic motives received more resources than icons described as self-interested helpers. Faces with symmetrical smiles received more resources than faces with asymmetrical smiles. These results suggest that reputation and smile asymmetry influence the likelihood of cooperation and thus may be reliable cues to altruism. These cues may allow for altruists to garner more resources in division of labour situations

Intergroup Variability in Personality Recognition

Automatic Identification of personality in conversational speech has many applications in natural language processing such as leader identification in a meeting, adaptive dialogue systems, and dating websites. However, the widespread acceptance of automatic personality recognition through lexical and vocal characteristics is limited by the variability of error rate in a general purpose model among speakers from different demographic groups. While other work reports accuracy, we explored error rates of automatic personality recognition task using classification models for different genders and native language groups (L1). We also present a statistical experiment showing the influence of gender and L1 on the relation between acoustic-prosodic features and NEO- FFI self-reported personality traits. Our results show the impact of demographic differences on error rate varies considerably while predicting “Big Five” personality traits from speaker’s utterances. This impact can also be observed through differences in the statistical relationship of voice characteristics with each personality inventory. These findings can be used to calibrate existing personality recognition models or to develop new models that are robust to intergroup variability

Social Media’s impact on Intellectual Property Rights

This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in Handbook of Research on Counterfeiting and Illicit Trade, edited by Peggy E. Chaudhry, published in 2017 by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785366451. This material is for private use only, and cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher.Peer reviewe

Lidando com piadas na aula de ESL: uma proposta pedagógica centrada na compreensão

This paper makes a pedagogical proposal to delve into jokes in the ESL classroom and sensitise learners to their complexity. It consists of five instructional phases and is based, on the one hand, on another proposal to teach the pragmatics of speech acts in an L2. On the other hand, this proposal relies on a relevance-theoretic classification of jokes made on the basis of the various linguistic, cultural and cognitive factors that humorists exploit in their production. Since it only centres on how different types of jokes can be distinguished and what their correct comprehension involves, it has a cognitive orientation and does not address issues connected with joke production. The proposal is devised for ESL students with an advanced level of English and ultimately seeks to develop their metalinguistic, meta-cultural and metacognitive abilities as a way of enabling them to grasp the humorousness of funny texts, appraise them and react to them in an appropriate wayEste artigo traz uma proposta pedagógica para aprofundar as piadas na sala de aula de ESL (Inglês como língua estrangeira, na tradução para a língua portuguesa) e sensibilizar os alunos a respeito de sua complexidade. Ela consiste em cinco fases instrucionais que, por um lado, baseia-se em outra proposta de ensino da pragmática dos atos de fala em uma L2 e, por outro lado, baseia-se em uma classificação teórica da relevância das piadas feitas com base nos vários fatores linguísticos, culturais e cognitivos que os humoristas exploram em sua produção. Como a proposta se concentra apenas em como os diferentes tipos de piadas podem ser distinguidos e em qual a correta compreensão envolvida, ela tem uma orientação cognitiva e não aborda questões relacionadas à produção da piada. A proposta é elaborada para estudantes de ESL com um nível avançado de inglês e, por conseguinte, busca desenvolver suas habilidades metalinguísticas, meta-culturais e metacognitivas como uma maneira de permitir-lhes compreender o humor de textos engraçados, avaliá-los e reagir a eles apropriadamenteMinisterio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad. Agencia Estatal de Investigación. FFI2016-76047-