The Communicative Function of Sad Facial Expressions:

摘要

What are the communicative functions of sad facial expressions? Research shows that people feel sadness in response to losses but ita??s unclear whether sad expressions function to communicate losses to others and if so, what makes these signals credible. Here we use economic games to test the hypothesis that sad expressions lend credibility to claims of loss. Participants play the role of either a proposer or recipient in a game with a fictional backstory and real monetary payoffs. The proposers view a (fictional) video of the recipienta??s character displaying either a neutral or sad expression paired with a claim of loss. The proposer then decided how much money to give to the recipient. In three experiments, we test alternative theories by using situations in which the recipienta??s losses were uncertain (Experiment 1), the recipienta??s losses were certain (Experiment 2), or the recipient claims failed gains rather than losses (Experiment 3). Overall, we find that participants gave more money to recipients who displayed sad expressions compared to neutral expressions, but only under conditions of uncertain loss. This finding supports the hypothesis that sad expressions function to increase the credibility of claims of loss.