Reading the Research: What Does a Smile Mean?

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article, I feel, kind of hits the top of the "well, duhhhh" meter for most people.  We've all seen fakey-polite smiles on TV or in advertisements, for example, which tend to get exaggerated to make a point. And there are mean smiles, where people are amused at your expense and their mouths smile but their eyes are usually showing their cruelty.  This article is not talking about those kinds of smiles, though.

Instead, this article covers more of the "I'm amused," the "I'm interested in this," and the "haha did that really just happen?" types of smiles. The researchers claim that in a one-on-one situation, people interact with computers in a social manner.  I'm not 100% on how accurate that is, since it's unwise to judge the whole of human behavior by my own behavior.  I sometimes treat objects like people, sometimes not.  Perhaps, in that particular setting, with their specially designed software, the majority of people also humanize the computer.

Regardless, it is absolutely true that many people (including some researchers, apparently) assume a smile equals "happiness" or some variation of that feeling.  In elementary school, if we're taught at all, we're taught that a smile equates to being happy.  As neurotypical people age, they learn otherwise, at least subconsciously.  They learn about polite smiles, mean ones, fake ones, embarrassed ones, and other kinds.  But if you ask a random person, they probably won't be able to articulate the various kinds of smiles without a lot of thought.  This is just part of the hidden curriculum that autistic people don't automatically learn.

Personally, I thought it was kind of interesting that this particular dataset showed smiles as a measure of engagement and interest with the activity, rather than any particular emotional response.  I also thought it was odd that people tended to smile more when getting wrong answers during the study than when getting right ones.  The article tells us the questions were difficult, and the subject was geography, which most US natives aren't great at.  So perhaps these smiles were of the "seriously, I got it wrong again?  Wow, I can't believe this is happening," type.

Meanwhile, I think I probably smile a lot less than most people I know, unless I'm actually engaging with people and need to convey my attention, feelings about the person I'm interacting with, or feelings on the subject of discussion.  So, I don't know.  Interesting stuff, anyway.