Alle Publikationen
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2017
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(2017): Smile for a while. The effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer affect and satisfaction. In: Journal of Service Management 28 (2), S. 284-304. DOI: 10.1108/JOSM-11-2015-0372
Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customers' affective states (pleasure, arousal, and dominance) and satisfaction. Building on the stimulus-organism-response framework and theories of emotional contagion and feelings-as-information, the main hypothesis was that a smiling (vs non-smiling) employee significantly increases customer satisfaction through the mediating influence of pleasure. Design/methodology/approach - The study used a quasi-experimental two-group between-subjects design. A total of 210 customers at a large retail bank had a brief service encounter at the store entrance with a smiling (vs non-smiling) bank teller. Customers then went into the bank to do what they came to do. Before leaving the bank, customers completed a survey that included demographic information, affect (pleasure, arousal, and dominance), and measures of customer satisfaction. Findings - A smiling (vs non-smiling) employee had a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction. This effect was mediated by pleasure, but also, to a weaker extent, by dominance. These results contradict previous claims that smiling-induced emotional contagion does not remain throughout the completion of a service encounter. Practical implications - Managers should encourage, and potentially train, employees to act in ways associated with positive emotions. Managers could also hire employees based on how good they are at acting and expressing themselves in a genuinely positive manner and create a pleasant store atmosphere so that the feelings and behaviors displayed by frontline employees are genuine rather than inauthentic. Originality/value - This is the first experimental field study to examine the isolated effect that employee-displayed smiling has on customers' affective states and satisfaction. The results provide more direct evidence for the psychological processes justified by emotional contagion and feelings-as-information theories. Furthermore, the finding that dominance mediates the smiling-satisfaction link has never been shown before.
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(2017): The depicted service employee in marketing communications. An empirical assessment of the impact of facial happiness. In: Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 38, S. 186-193. DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.06.006
Abstract: Employees are often depicted in service firms' marketing communications material. This study examines one particular aspect of such depictions: the signaling of happiness in terms of the employees' facial expressions. It is assumed that depicted faces transmit emotional signals, that receivers are hardwired to react to such signals, and that the emotional signals influence the outcomes of the receivers' information processing activities. Our empirical results show that this was indeed the case: employee display of happiness was positively and significantly associated with employee evaluations. The contribution of employee happiness remained significant when other characteristics of the depicted face (e.g., attractiveness) were controlled for. Our results also show that employee evaluations had a positive impact on the overall evaluation of the offer of the employee's firm, and that the employee evaluations mediated the association between employee display of happiness and the evaluation of the offer.
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(2017): Towards a social functional account of laughter. Acoustic features convey reward, affiliation, and dominance. In: PLoS one 12 (8). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183811
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28850589 Abstract: Recent work has identified the physical features of smiles that accomplish three tasks fundamental to human social living: rewarding behavior, establishing and managing affiliative bonds, and negotiating social status. The current work extends the social functional account to laughter. Participants (N = 762) rated the degree to which reward, affiliation, or dominance (between-subjects) was conveyed by 400 laughter samples acquired from a commercial sound effects website. Inclusion of a fourth rating dimension, spontaneity, allowed us to situate the current approach in the context of existing laughter research, which emphasizes the distinction between spontaneous and volitional laughter. We used 11 acoustic properties extracted from the laugh samples to predict participants' ratings. Actor sex moderated, and sometimes even reversed, the relation between acoustics and participants' judgments. Spontaneous laughter appears to serve the reward function in the current framework, as similar acoustic properties guided perceiver judgments of spontaneity and reward: reduced voicing and increased pitch, increased duration for female actors, and increased pitch slope, center of gravity, first formant, and noisiness for male actors. Affiliation ratings diverged from reward in their sex-dependent relationship to intensity and, for females, reduced pitch range and raised second formant. Dominance displayed the most distinct pattern of acoustic predictors, including increased pitch range, reduced second formant in females, and decreased pitch variability in males. We relate the current findings to existing findings on laughter and human and non-human vocalizations, concluding laughter can signal much more that felt or faked amusement.
Keywords: Acoustics, Adult, Aged, Art der Beziehung zum Interaktionspartner, Belohnung, center of gravity, Dauer, Female, formant, Gender, Gestik/Mimik, Humans, Klanghöhe (pitch), Kommunikations-/Interaktionsprinzipien, Lächeln, Lachen, Laughter/psychology, Male, Middle Aged, noisiness, pitch slope, Reward, Sanktionierung, Sex Factors, Social Dominance, Social Identification, Soziale Distanz, Soziale Dominanz, Spontaneität beim Lachen, Status / biologische Marker, Stimmhaftigkeit (voicing), Young Adult, Zugehörigkeit (affiliation) 2016
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(2016): Status, Sex, and Smiling. In: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 16 (3), S. 531-540. DOI: 10.1177/0146167290163011
Abstract: Based on previous work showing that sex is a "diffuse status cue" (Berger, Rosenholtz, & Zelditch, 1980), the hypothesis that women smile more than men because of status differences between the sexes was evaluated Status was manipulated by assigning men and women to the roles of interviewer (high power) or applicant (low power) in simulated job interviews with either male or female partners. As predicted, overall, applicants smiled more than interviewers, demonstrating that smiling does reflect status. However, the sex composition of the pairs also influenced smiling frequency. Male interviewers smiled significantly less than their applicant partners, whereas female interviewers did not. The results suggest that, compared with females, males may more readily experience power and dominance as concomitants of high-status roles, which may then be reflected in the frequency of their smiling.
2015
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(2015): The Cultural Significance of a Smile. In: YOUNG 23 (2), S. 154-170. DOI: 10.1177/1103308815569388
Abstract: This article explores meaning-making in Norwegian youth sport. More specifically, how sport media becomes a tool in the instruction of youth athletes. Throughout the 2011-12 season I observed how coaches used portrayals of elite women handballers to educate their 13-year-old girl athletes. Depictions of smiling women were used in contextual attempts to convey the pragmatic benefits of smiling girls. I apply cultural sociology to investigate the processes where coaches mobilize and mould media depictions to inform youth's sport praxis. The account shows why and how the smile's pragmatics is shaped by and shape broad conceptions of youth, sport and gender. Analysis reveals that the smile encourages what the coaches perceive as appropriate strategies towards success. The cultural significance of the smile resides within its capacities to better the performance, to resolve tensions in team hierarchies and allow appropriate displays of aggression in girl handball.
2011
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(2011): Service without a smile. Comparing the consequences of neutral and positive display rules. In: The Journal of applied psychology 96 (2), S. 350-362. DOI: 10.1037/a0021880
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21171731 Abstract: We used an experimental design to examine the intrapersonal and interpersonal processes through which neutral display rules, compared to positive display rules, influence objective task performance of poll workers and ratings provided by survey respondents of the poll workers. Student participants (N = 140) were trained to adhere to 1 of the 2 display rule conditions while delivering opinion surveys to potential patrons of an organization during a 40-min period. Results showed that, compared to positive display rules, neutral display rules resulted in less task persistence and greater avoidance behavior. These effects were mediated through a greater use of expression suppression. In addition, neutral display rules resulted in less positive respondent mood, which accounted for lower ratings of service quality and of overall favorability attitudes toward the sponsoring organization. The importance and ubiquity of neutral display rules are discussed, given the potential for positive and negative consequences at work.
Keywords: Adult, Affect/physiology, Attitude, Business Studies, dominance, Female, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Lächeln, Male, Nonverbale Kommunikation, Psychologie, Smiling/physiology/psychology, Sozialpsychologie, Students/psychology, Task Performance and Analysis, Work/psychology, Young Adult 2008
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(2008): Nature and Nurture in the Development of Social Smiling. In: Philosophical Psychology 21 (3), S. 349-357. DOI: 10.1080/09515080802190547
Abstract: Research on the origins of human social smiling is presented as a case study of how a species-specific, species-typical behavior may emerge from thousands of momentary events in which a continuously changing biological organism acts to make, respond to, and learn from its experience.
2005
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(2005): Is “service with a smile” enough?. Authenticity of positive displays during service encounters. In: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 96 (1), S. 38-55. DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2004.08.002
Abstract: Service providers use impression management strategies to engender satisfaction and repeat business in customers. Managing emotional expressions is one strategy to meet those goals. We extended research oil the "Duchenne Smile" to see if authenticity of employee expressions influenced the impressions formed of the employee's friendliness and the overall satisfaction with the encounter. Furthermore, we took two other factors into account-task performance and busyness-to examine the conditions under which authenticity would have the greatest impact. In Study 1, we obtained reactions to videotaped simulations that manipulated authenticity of positive displays and task performance during a hotel check-in encounter. ANCOVA results supported that authenticity of the service provider enhanced perceptions of friendliness, but only influenced customer satisfaction when tasks were performed well. In Study 2, hierarchical linear modeling with reactions from 255 customers of 64 restaurant servers showed that perceived display authenticity enhanced the perceived friendliness of the employee when the store was slow, but less so when it was busy. Display authenticity had a direct effect oil customer satisfaction, regardless of task performance (which was generally high) and busyness. We conclude that display authenticity is all extra-role behavior for service encounters with an additive effect on encounter satisfaction only when other factors are at optimal levels. We suggest implications for display rule policies and service training.
1998
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(1998): Smiles, Speech, and Body Posture. How Women and Men Display Sociometric Status and Power. In: Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 22 (4), S. 209-228. DOI: 10.1023/A:1022967721884
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022967721884 Abstract: This study found that power and status have different effects on nonverbal behavior. Participants lived together for a term in ten member groups (50 women, 29 men) and rated their housemates on characteristics related to power (toughness and leadership) and sociometric status (popularity and being well-known). Smiling, arm and leg position, and total talking time were recorded in group discussions, one with housemates only and one with strangers included. Power, but not sociometric status, was associated with open-body postures in women and with frequency of talking in women and men. Smiling was unrelated to power and was positively correlated with sociometric status. Male body posture was more open, but women and men did not differ in frequency of talking or smiling.
Keywords: Antworten im Rahmen einer Konversation, Anwesenheit nur von Bekannten/Freunden vs. Anwesenheit von Fremden, Biologische Marker, Dauer, Häufigkeit, Menge des Sprechens eines Konversationspartners, Gender, Gestik, Konversationsanalyse, Körperhaltung, Korrespondenz, Kultureller Kontext, Lächeln, Offenheit vs. Geschlossenheit der Körperhaötung, Öffentlicher vs. privater Raum, (Position der) Extremitäten, Sozialer Raum, Sprachgebrauch, Sprechzeit, Status, Turn-taking innerhalb der Konsersation
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