Facial Recognition: Training Participants to Detect Genuine Smiles

Nonverbal behaviors have the ability to affect how we perceive social communications. One of these nonverbal behaviors, a smile, is not always genuinely expressed. Our experiment attempted to improve discernment between genuine and fake smiles by manipulating training and feedback. The training/feedback group received feedback for each video and training. Our control was the no training/no feedback group, in which participants viewed a PowerPoint that presented smile information not relevant to distinguishing among smiles. The training group was given applicable information, through PowerPoint, on distinguishing among smiles along with viewing two videos of genuine and fake smiles. Prior to training, participants viewed 10 smile videos and marked whether they believed the smile was genuine or fake. Following training, the participants viewed 10 new videos. Our sample was comprised of 98 participants from the General Psychology course at Valparaiso University. The results indicated that a very brief and simple training program improved participants’ ability to distinguish between genuine and fake smiles. Surprisingly, our feedback manipulation did not improve detection

Can You Spot the Fake?

The ability to correctly interpret smiles is a skill that can be helpful in many aspects of life. One key feature that people look at is a smile, but smiles may not always be genuine. In our study, we focused on the detection of genuine and fake smiles and trained subjects to detect deception. The first training group was given applicable information, through PowerPoint, on distinguishing between smiles along with two videos presenting a genuine and fake smile. The second group viewed a PowerPoint with applicable information without videos. The third group viewed a PowerPoint containing just videos. Our control group was asked to think about situations where a fake or genuine smile would be used. Before training, participants viewed 10 smile videos and indicated whether each smile was genuine or fake. Following training, the participants viewed 10 new videos and again indicated whether each smile was genuine or fake. We hypothesized that the training groups would identify more smiles correctly than the control group. One week later, all groups viewed the same 20 videos again to determine whether the training had a lasting effect