Generally, people tend to believe that emotions and expressions portray so much about someone’s personality. Without talking to a person, we can pick up certain aspects of their personality based on their facial expressions and body language. We can do this because certain expressions are considered to be universal, and therefore can give us insight on the person’s mood, or when observed across several settings, even their personality. These expressions can be seen physically as smiles, laughs, eyebrow shrugs, muscle contractions, and other characteristics (Kaczmarek et al.). First impressions of a person’s personality are deeply rooted on their facial expressions or emotions at the time of meeting in person, or the same in images or videos. Facial expressions do not only give us insight on a person’s personality, but also on his or her creativeness and work-related success, as seen in the study discussed next.
The journal article addresses how facial expressions in pictures relate to scientific achievement in researchers. The study measures how much the degree of smiles (no smiles, partial smiles, or Duchenne smiles) relates to the researcher’s work impact. If facial expressions give us insight on the person’s personality or their mood, then they could also give us insight on their work achievement. Since work achievement is correlated with high positive emotions (Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003), then one would expect the person to have a happy emotion on their face in the form of a smile. Smiles are universally understood to portray good moods; which could indicate that the person is successful. In this case, the profile images of 440 researchers were studied to prove whether or not this theory is true. Smiles were the only expression studied in the research, which represents happiness. While this is only one of the six universal expressions (disgust, sadness, happiness, fear, anger, and surprise), the study exemplifies the universality of happiness.
The participants were recruited from ResearchGate, a social network for scientists (Kaczmarek et al.), and the first 10 men and women were chosen from each letter of the alphabet, resulting in 440 participants in total. Three coders were used without knowledge of the research purpose and evaluated whether the image featured no smile, a smile, or a Duchenne smile; and there was high interrater agreement (which further indicates that some expressions are universal). No biological age was recorded for the participants, but an approximate age was predicted based on the photograph. Researchers used each scientist’s public information on ResearchGate to assess their achievement—like number of publications, total number of citations (per paper or per referrals), number of reads, reads per paper, and followers (Kaczmarek et al). Multiple regression tests were performed on SPSS. No further methodological details are given.
Results showed that out of 440 participants, 124 images featured a Duchenne smile, and 316 featured partial or no smile. The smiles in the images were significantly related to the number of citations, but were not significantly related neither to the number of publications by the scientist nor the number of reads the article had (Kaczmarek et al.). Differences in achievement based on gender and age were not significant. Interestingly, older scientists had more numbers of publications and citations, but did not have more reads per paper than younger scientists. Considering that younger people are more socially active than older people, this finding could represent that younger people do a better job at promoting their work than older people do. Results show that smiling intensity does represent better work impact (citations and followers) among scientists, but does not represent higher quantity of publications (Kaczmarek et al).
The study wanted to measure whether positive expressions were related to higher scientific achievement. Although both impact and quantity of publications were measured, quality was the main focus. Quality indicates the impact and caliber of the scientists’ work, while quantity represents number of publications the scientist has. Researchers concluded that quality, not quantity, was related to positive expressions in the images. This means that a full smile on a profile picture will lure more readers in, and that these scientists will be more likely to be cited in the future. The basis behind this finding is that big smiles are considered to be friendlier and represent a creative individual, therefore enticing the public to read their work.
Although the results of the study do not show causality because the study is cross-sectional, it was concluded that scientists with bigger smiles are generally happier because of their successful work and public following. Even though the reason behind the smile is unknown, there is a correlation between the degree of the smile and the amount of followers the scientist has. These results are in fact seen in the images of some scientists of this particular study. On the page before the abstract, some scientists’ pictures are posted, with the amount of publications and citations listed for each. The first researcher, Lukasz Dominik Kaczmarek, has his hands over his jaw and has a small smile, while Todd B Kashdan has a big smile. While Kaczmarek has 135 citations and a small smile, Kashdan has 9,206 citations and a big smile. This information accurately represents the results in the study. Quantity might not be a measure of success, but the amount of citations surely represents the amount of people that follow the scientist or view his work as interesting. Pictured above are the images of the authors in the study that are mentioned here, with their amount of citations and publications.
This study exemplifies the content in the Foundations section for emotions by Paul Ekman. In the book, Ekman hypothesized that some emotions were universal, and completed many studies with people that lived in remote tribes to prove it. He examined facial expressions in people that had no exposure to social media or televisions, and observed the main expressions we believe are universal, and did not observe any new expressions. He traveled to New Guinea to personally interview the people there, showing pictures of different expressions and asking them to explain what happened before, during, and after the picture had been taken. The stories made by the men accurately depicted events that would trigger emotions like the ones in the pictures they saw. For example, in a picture of someone that looks sad, New Guineans would explain that the man’s daughter had just died—an event that brings much sadness. Later, when asked to do the expressions of the men in the photographs, they were able to replicate expressions of enjoyment, sadness, anger, and disgust. Ekman also filmed New Guinean’s interactions with their friends, and was able to identify universal expressions.
Paul Ekman wanted to prove that people all across the world attribute specific emotions to different facial expressions, and that these are not learned through social media or television, but are innate. The study in the journal article observed scientists’ smiles on their profile images and studied their achievement. The study proved that those with Duchenne smiles had higher numbers of citations and followers, proving that a smile is perceived as friendly and more inviting. These results prove that people attribute smiles to friendliness and career achievement, since positive emotions influence creativity and therefore one’s work is positively affected. The Foundations book and the journal article both prove that some emotions and expressions are universal, and that we associate an expression with one’s mood, personality, and even career success.