The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

SUBMISSIVE TELLS
lower jaw is dropped and the corners of the mouth are
pulled back. 11 The chimpanzee's play face is very similar
to human laughter because the mouth is opened wide and
it's accompanied by rhythmic vocalization. At the same
time the chimpanzee's submission face is very similar to
the human smile because both are silent and the teeth are
fully exposed. These two chimpanzee expressions serve
very different functions. Yet human laughter and smiling
often appear together and seem to serve the same purpose.
This suggests that, during their evolution, human laughter
and smiling have converged. For our distant ancestors they
were quite different, but for us they are very similar.
If the chimpanzee submission face is designed to
appease dominant individuals, does smiling serve the
same function for humans? The answer is 'yes', but it
depends on how friendly the situation is and what kinds
of smiles people produce. Take the case where two
people are together and one has higher status than the
other. When the situation is not very friendly, the subordinate
person is likely to smile much more than the
dominant person. Here, smiling performs the role of
appeasement. However, when the situation is friendly, the
dominant person may actually smile more than the subordinate
person. The difference between these two
situations, it turns out, is not that the subordinate person
smiles less, but that the dominant person smiles more in
the friendly situation. In other words, subordinate individuals
produce similar amounts of smiling, regardless
of whether the situation is friendly or unfriendly, but
dominant people smile far less in unfriendly situations
and much more in friendly situations. Marvin Hecht and
Marianne LaFrance, who have studied this phenomenon,
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