Through a Glass Darkly: Effects of Smiling and Visibility on Recognition and Avoidance in Passing Encounters

Abstract

This study examined the patterns of recognition and avoidance in pedestrians as they walked past a confederate. The first purpose of the study was to replicate the results of an earlier experiment (Patterson, Webb, & Schwartz, 2002) showing that the addition of a smile from the confederate greatly increased pedestrians’ responsiveness. A second purpose was to determine if confederates’ visibility (wearing sunglasses or not) in these passing encounters would affect pedestrians’ reactions and provide insight regarding the functions involved in these events. Specifically, the effects of condition (avoid, look‐only, and look and smile), sex of confederate, and sunglasses on passing pedestrians were examined in a field study on 183 participants. A log‐linear analysis of the results provided support for the first hypothesis with more glances, smiles, and nods in the look and smile condition than in the avoid and look‐only conditions. The hypotheses that confederates who wore sunglasses would receive fewer glances than those who did not and that this effect would be greater for the male confederate were not supported. There was, however, a significant Sunglasses × Sex of Confederate effect on smiles, with pedestrians smiling more at the male confederate when he wore sunglasses than when he did not and smiling less at the female confederate when she wore sunglasses than when she did not. The contrasting effect of sunglasses for the male and female confederate was discussed in terms of the different functions of a smile in pedestrian encounters.

Keywords:

• Nonverbal communication
• Pedestrian behavior

Notes

[1] Because there was only one confederate of each sex, it is possible that distinctive characteristics of a particular confederate could be responsible for sex differences in this study. Nevertheless, our experience in selecting confederates and in later testing for differences among them within sex suggests that this was not a serious concern. First, across several studies using this paradigm, we have been selective in recruiting confederates whose ages range from approximately 20 to the early 30s. People who are at the extremes of height and weight are not recruited as confederates. Second, in the Patterson et al. (2002) study and in new unpublished data (Patterson, Iizuka, Tubbs, Ansel, & Anson, 2004) in which two or more confederates of each sex were recruited, we found no significant differences among confederates within sex on participant glances at the confederates.

[2] In the instances where there was a confederate and observer disagreement, two decision rules were employed in determining a scored reaction. First, if either person made an uncertain judgment and the other person judged that the behavior was present or absent, the present or absent judgment was selected as the final one. For any other disagreement (e.g., the confederate judging that a smile occurred and the observer judging that a smile did not occur), the confederate’s judgment was selected as the final one because the confederate was closer to the pedestrian when making the judgment.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark E. Tubbs

Miles L. Patterson and Mark E. Tubbs are at the Department of Psychology, University of Missouri‐St. Louis. We want to thank Kathleen Fradkin, Brian Waeckerle, and Urail Williams for their help in collecting the data.