Journal of Nonverbal Behavior最新文献

Physiognomy, the idea that a person's character is reflected in their facial features, has a long history in scholarly thought. Although now widely regarded as pseudoscience in academic circles, recent work suggests that laypeople hold physiognomic beliefs and that belief endorsement is associated with support for facial profiling technology and other outcomes. Here, we build on previous work and investigate who believes in physiognomy. In four studies (three preregistered), we (1) assess the prevalence of physiognomic beliefs across different sociodemographic groups, and (2) investigate its psychological correlates. In a large, representative sample of the Dutch population (Study 1, n = 2624), about 50% of participants at least somewhat endorsed physiognomic beliefs. Endorsement of physiognomic beliefs varied little as a function of gender, age, education, and income. Across different measures of thinking styles and other lay beliefs, we found that physiognomic beliefs were most strongly related to how much people trust their intuitions-an association that emerged consistently with British (Study 2, n = 224), Nigerian (Study 3, n = 147), and Dutch participants (Study 4, n = 388). Participants who scored higher on faith in intuition were also more confident in the accuracy of their face-based trustworthiness impressions. In sum, the present studies suggest that lay beliefs in physiognomy are (a) common, (b) similarly endorsed across various socio-demographic groups, and (c) associated with an intuitive thinking style.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10919-025-00497-w.

We studied how personality differences and conversation topics predict interpersonal speech coordination, leading/following dynamics, and nonverbal interactional dominance in dyadic conversations. In a laboratory, 100 undergraduate students (50 same-gender dyads) had a 15-min conversation following three topics (introduction/self-disclosure/argumentation). Their speech coordination and turn-taking (speech/silence) dynamics were assessed through nonlinear time-series analyses: Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA), Diagonal Cross-Recurrence Profiles (DCRP), and Anisotropic-CRQA. From the time series, we extracted five variables to operationalize speech coordination (global and at lag-zero), leading-following dynamics, and asymmetries in the interacting partners' nonverbal interactional dominance. Interaction appraisals were also assessed. Associations between personality traits Extraversion/Agreeableness, speech coordination, and nonverbal interactional dominance were tested using mixed-effects models. Speech coordination and nonverbal interactional dominance differed across conversational topics and peaked during argumentative conversations. Extraversion was associated with increased speech coordination, and nonverbal interactional dominance, especially during the argumentative conversation. During a self-disclosure conversation, Extraversion concordance was associated with more symmetry in turn-taking dynamics. Speech coordination was generally associated with positive post-conversational appraisals such as wanting to meet in the future or liking the conversation partner, especially in extroverted individuals, whereas introverts seemed to value less swift dynamics. High Agreeableness predicted less speech coordination during argumentative conversations, and increased speech coordination (at lag-zero) predicted reduced perceived naturality in agreeable individuals. This may suggest a trade-off between maintaining swift speech dynamics and the natural flow of conversation for individuals high in Agreeableness.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10919-025-00482-3.

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by reading difficulties, yet there is growing evidence for coinciding social and emotional strengths. In our previous work, we found children with dyslexia displayed greater emotional facial behavior to affective stimuli than their well-reading peers, an enhancement that related to better social skills. Traditional measures provide static "snapshots" of emotional facial behavior but overlook important dynamic information about the face's movements that may confer interpersonal advantages. Here, we examined whether variability in emotional facial behavior was heightened in children with dyslexia and associated with social communication benefits. We coded the second-by-second intensities of ten emotional facial behaviors in 54 children (ages 7-14) with (n = 33) and without (n = 21) dyslexia while they watched five emotion-inducing film clips. For each trial, we calculated two facial behavior variability scores: a within-emotion variability score (the second-by-second intensity changes within each category of emotional behavior) and a between-emotions variability score (the total number of changes between categories of emotional behavior). Parents also reported on children's real-world communication skills. Linear mixed-effects models (controlling for age, sex, and total facial behavior) revealed that children with dyslexia had higher within-emotion facial behavior variability but not higher between-emotions facial behavior variability than those without dyslexia. Across the sample, greater total within-emotion facial behavior variability correlated with higher parent-reported functional communication-the ability to express ideas in ways that others can easily understand. These findings suggest nuanced emotional facial behavior dynamics contribute to social strengths in dyslexia.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10919-025-00490-3.

The ingroup advantage refers to the phenomenon of emotions being more accurately recognised when expressors and perceivers share the same cultural background. Though well-documented in studies using posed facial expressions, whether the in-group advantage generalizes to spontaneous expressions remains unclear. This pre-registered study examined cross-cultural emotion recognition using dynamic posed and spontaneous expressions in a balanced design. Perceivers from the Netherlands (N = 762) and China (N = 738) judged emotions from facial expressions produced by Dutch and Chinese expressors in a forced-choice emotion recognition task. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find a mutual ingroup advantage. Instead, we found a Decoder and an Encoder effect for both posed and spontaneous expressions. Specifically, Dutch Perceivers outperformed Chinese Perceivers in recognising both Dutch and Chinese emotional expressions (the Decoder effect), while Chinese emotional expressions were better recognised than Dutch expressions by both Chinese and Dutch Perceivers (the Encoder effect). Bayesian analyses confirmed robust evidence for these effects. These findings challenge the robustness of the ingroup advantage and highlight the importance of using ecologically valid stimuli in the study of nonverbal emotional communication.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10919-025-00492-1.

An important task in criminal justice is to evaluate the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. In this study, we examined if machine learning could be used to detect accuracy. Specifically, we examined if support vector machines (SVMs) could accurately classify testimony statements as correct or incorrect based purely on the nonverbal aspects of the voice. We analyzed 3,337 statements (76.61% accurate) from 51 eyewitness testimonies along 94 acoustic variables. We also examined the relative importance of each of the acoustic variables, using Lasso regression. Results showed that the machine learning algorithms were able to predict accuracy between 20 and 40% above chance level (AUC = 0.50). The most important predictors included acoustic variables related to the amplitude (loudness) of speech and the duration of pauses, with higher amplitude predicting correct recall and longer pauses predicting incorrect recall. Taken together, we find that machine learning methods are capable of predicting whether eyewitness testimonies are correct or incorrect with above-chance accuracy and comparable to human performance, but without detrimental human biases. This offers a proof-of-concept for machine learning in evaluations of eyewitness accuracy, and opens up new avenues of research that we hope might improve social justice.

This study examines the ability to express distinct emotions of negative and positive valences through voice modulations (i.e., affective prosody production) and how the speaker’s gender and age influence this ability. A sample of 31 neurologically healthy adults (17 women and 14 men, aged 41–76) were asked to say “papa” with six emotional tones—sadness, anger, fear, pleasant surprise, joy, and awe—in response to affect-evoking scenarios. The speakers’ vocal expressions were recorded and then assessed by five expert raters and 30 naive listeners using an emotion recognition task. Results showed that negative emotions were expressed more accurately than positive ones, highlighting a valence effect. In addition, female speakers showed higher recognition rates for their expressions of vocal emotions than male speakers. Furthermore, aging was associated with a moderate decline in the accuracy of prosodic emotional expression. Despite generally lower recognition rates from naive listeners compared to expert raters, recognition rates for all emotions, with the exception of awe, were not statistically different between listener groups. In conclusion, cognitively healthy adults can convey discrete emotions through prosody, including distinct positive emotions, but there are significant differences depending on the emotion expressed and individual speaker characteristics. These results highlight the complexity of affective prosody production and contribute to the understanding of individual differences in nonverbal emotional expression.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, face masks have become a common experience for many people to reduce the spread of the disease. Although recent research has shown that face masks impair emotion recognition, it is unclear how this impairment differs from other familiar types of face covering, such as sunglasses. In the present study, participants identified expressions and rated their confidence in this assessment of six affective expressions (anger, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness, and happiness) on faces wearing masks or sunglasses at four different time points during the pandemic (June 2020, March 2021, September 2021, June 2022). They also provided judgements of emotion intensity and genuineness. Overall, emotion identification of faces with masks was less accurate and had lower ratings of confidence and emotion intensity than faces with sunglasses. Faces with sunglasses, alternatively, were rated as less genuine than faces with masks. Furthermore, this pattern for both masks and sunglasses remained stable across two years of the pandemic. This study provides new insights on the differential effects of face masks and sunglasses on emotion perception and highlights the importance of face coverings for emotion communication and social interactions.

Child abuse is a major concern worldwide. While live-link interviews have been successful in legal and medical contexts, its potential for eyewitness interviews remains insufficiently studied, particularly in terms of non-verbal misinformation. This study explored tele-forensic interviewing (tele-FI), where video-conferencing software such as Zoom or Skype are used to conduct forensic interviews, as an alternative to face-to-face interviews. Focus was given to the susceptibility of eyewitness memory to the gestural misinformation effect (GME) where post-event information in the form of gesture can distort recall of a witnessed incident. Forty-seven children were recruited ranging in age from 5- to 8-years-old (M = 6 years 11 months). Comparisons were made to face-to-face conditions from prior published work by the authors (N = 63, M = 7 years 2 months) using the same methodology, video, and question sets. Results find support for the GME during tele-FI, with 1.23 misinformation details recorded on average and tele-FI showing a similar response pattern as face-to-face interviews. Accuracy was shown to be comparable in tele-FI (M = 16.21) compared to face-to-face interviews (M = 14.02), with a notable increase in the amount of relevant information provided in the tele-FI condition. Developmental age showed significant increases in the quality and quantity of data. This study provides evidence for tele-FI as a viable alternative to face-to-face interviews, and represents the first exploration of the GME in tele-FI, to the best of our knowledge. Discussion focuses on the benefits of tele-FI and the implications for police interview guidelines.

Previous research has found that higher-pitched female voices elicit jealousy among women. However, it is unknown whether jealousy towards higher-pitched female voices is driven by perceptions of the rival’s mating strategy or by beliefs about the speaker’s attractiveness to one’s romantic partner. In addition, the degree to which higher-pitched female voices elicit jealousy could be associated with variation in trait jealousy among women listeners. Here, I manipulated women’s voices to be higher or lower in pitch, and tested whether variation in jealousy towards female voices was more strongly associated with perceptions of mate poaching, beliefs about the speaker’s attractiveness to listeners’ romantic partner, or with individual differences in trait jealousy. I replicated findings that higher voice pitch elicits more jealousy from women, which was positively associated with perceptions of mate poaching. I found no evidence of an association between trait jealousy and any voice-based perception. The findings suggest that perceptions of a target’s proclivity to mate poach better explain the jealousy-inducing nature of higher-pitched female voices than do beliefs about the speaker’s attractiveness to one’s romantic partner.

Whereas research has documented how atheists are perceived, none has considered their perceptibility. Atheists must first be identified as atheists in order to experience the stigma associated with them (i.e., as distrusted, disliked, and widely maligned). Although atheism is considered a concealable aspect of one’s identity, substantial research has found that a variety of ostensibly concealable attributes about a person are indeed legible from small and subtle cues. We merged these lines of inquiry here by considering the perceptibility of religious and spiritual (dis)belief. Studies 1A-1B showed that atheists could be reliably discerned from Christians based on brief glimpses of 100 standardized male faces. Experiment 2 replicated these results using female faces. Experiments 3 A-E then interrogated the facial features that support perceivers’ detection of atheism, showing that various parts of faces suffice for independently conveying atheism. Experiment 4 investigated and showed a potential mechanism for atheism detection – expressive suppression. Thus, across nine studies (N = 677), these data show robust evidence that atheists can be categorized from facial cues.