Are you friendly or just polite? - analysis of smiles in spontaneous face-to-face interactions

This work is part of a research effort to understand and characterize the morphological and dynamic features of polite and amused smiles. We analyzed a dataset consisting of young adults (n=61), interested in learning about banking services, who met with a professional banker face-to-face in a conference room while both participants’ faces were unobtrusively recorded. We analyzed 258 instances of amused and polite smiles from this dataset, noting also if they were shared, which we defined as if the rise of one starts before the decay of another. Our analysis confirms previous findings showing longer durations of amused smiles while also suggesting new findings about symmetry of the smile dynamics. We found more symmetry in the velocities of the rise and decay of the amused smiles, and less symmetry in the polite smiles. We also found fastest decay velocity for polite but shared smiles.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF IIS Award HCC-0705647)MIT Media Lab Consortiu

The Benefits of Synchronized Genuine Smiles in Face-to-Face Service Encounters

This paper examines the role of facial expressions in dyadic interactions between a banking service provider and customer. We conduct experiments in which service providers manipulate their facial expressions while interacting with customers in one of three conditions: In the neutral condition the banker tried to maintain a neutral facial expression; in the smiling condition the banker tried to smile throughout the interaction; in the empathetic condition the banker tried to respond with the same or complementary facial expressions. Results show that the customers (n = 37) were more satisfied with the service provider interaction when they perceived the service provider was empathetic. More significantly, the service provider and customer shared synchronized genuine facial expressions with many prolonged smiles, when customers said the service provider was empathetic. According to the analysis of the interactions, smiling bankers who did not share smiles with customers were appraised worse than non-smiling bankers

Expanding Leader Capability: An Exploratory Study of the Effect of Daily Practices for Leader Development

Leadership is, at its essence, an influence relationship between people. Leaders are often thought of as those who are able to influence people to take actions oriented toward achieving specific goals and objectives. While many books have been written, and myriad scholarly research studies conducted enumerating countless personal characteristics, qualities, and skills of the exemplary leader, little has been done to understand and convey the ways in which an individual might go about cultivating these virtues; which are often said to include charisma, empathy, communication skills, and others. Through a multiple single-subject design, this research examines the individual-level effect of a set of somatic daily practices for leader development—techniques integrated into everyday activities such as walking, sitting, and driving a car—based on the underlying principles of the Japanese art of aikido. The daily practices were designed to address 3 abilities at the individual level that are believed to be important to the leadership relationship: (a) focusing and sustaining the focus of attention, (b) establishing and maintaining genuine connections to other people, and (c) reducing and minimizing tension and stress. These 3 abilities function as facilitators of the individual skills, characteristics, and qualities that are thought to contribute to leader capability. Five study participants were taught the daily practices for leader development. Participants were asked to apply the practices as often as possible during the 12-week study period. They met with the researcher for 1 hour each week to review the practices and share their experiences implementing them. The Center for Creative Leadership’s Benchmarks 360-Degree Leader Assessment Inventory was used to measure leader ability before and after. Participants provided weekly self-assessments of attention, connection, and tension/stress. All 5 leaders made measurable improvements in one or more of the 3 ability areas of attention, connection, and tension/stress. Both the self-assessment data from the study participants and, in some cases, the external 360-degree assessment rating data from peers, superiors, and direct reports, showed meaningful improvement over the 12-week period. The findings indicated that, in a relatively short period of time, individual leaders can make dramatic changes in deeply habituated leadership-related behaviors. The electronic version of this dissertation is at OhioLINK ETD Center, www.etd.ohiolink.edu

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