FOOLED BY A SMILE - DETECTING ANXIETY IN OTHERS

Results from this research on facial affect indicative of state anxiet y suggest that expressors' smiles may have masked self-reported state anxiety such that judges were misled in their judgments of expressors' state anxiety. While in 17 earlier studies judges were highly accurat e in detecting state anxiety, judges were unable to distinguish low fr om high state anxiety in the present samples, and sometimes rated expr essors in high state-anxiety segments as more happy and likable than i n low state-anxiety segments. The critical difference between the pres ent and earlier studies seems to be the size of the image and the resu lting fact that nonenjoyment smiles were more visible to judges.