Abstract
Previous research has shown an unintuitive effect of facial expression on perceived age: smiling faces are perceived as older compared to neutral faces of the same people. The aging effect of smiling (AES), which is thought to result from the presence of smile-related wrinkles around the eyes, contradicts the common belief that smiling faces should be perceived as younger, not older. Previous research, however, has focused on faces of young adults, where the absence of inherent, age-related wrinkles and other age signs is offset by the weight of the smile-related wrinkles. In a series of experiments, we tested whether the AES extends to male and female faces in older age groups. We replicated the AES in young adults (20–39) and showed that it disappeared in older adults (60–79) of both genders. For photos of middle-aged adults (40–59), however, AES was found only for male, but not for female faces, who showed fewer and less prominent smile-related wrinkles. The results suggest that a person’s apparent age is perceived in a holistic manner in which age-related cues in the region of the eyes are weighted against age cues in other regions of the face.
Highlights
Previous research has shown an unintuitive effect of facial expression on perceived age: smiling faces are perceived as older compared to neutral faces of the same people
Given that no previous studies have examined this effect across different age groups, when determining the required sample size for the present study, we focused on the aging effect of smiling (AES)
For faces of middle-aged adults, AES was found in male, but not in female faces
Summary
Previous research has shown an unintuitive effect of facial expression on perceived age: smiling faces are perceived as older compared to neutral faces of the same people. In previous studies from our lab, we showed that smiling faces are perceived as older (between one and two years) compared to faces of the same people when they display a neutral expression. This aging effect of smiling (AES) is thought to be the result of the formation of smile-related wrinkles around the region of the eyes[19]. In contrast to common belief, smiling faces are perceived as older than neutral faces
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