The distress smile and its cognitive antecedents

Abstract

This paper investigates the paradoxical finding that physical pain in certain social situations makes people smile. A number of models have been proposed to explain emotional behaviour, and we tested some important predictions they make regarding the mental antecedents and cognitive properties that could characterize such distress smiles, specifically ones that occur in informal and non-serious social situations. We assessed impulsivity and controllability of the smile, its accompanying emotions, dependence on effortful appraisal, communicative functions, and whether it is goal dependent or stimulus driven. To do this we made students receive and induce physical pain to each other on the upper arm, and varied the following conditions in which the pain was administered: social distance between participants, hierarchical relation between the participants, attentional load, and instructions to make no movements. We also assessed the presence of happiness and amusement (or mirth), and whether they were correlated with the distress smiles. We concluded that the distress induced smile, at least for males in informal social situations, is a goal dependent impulsive behaviour that communicates appeasement and non-hostility.