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added on 2010-10-01 03:58:00
Erik Schlicht, a cognitive scientist at Aptima, has made a study which proves friendly faces are more likely to influence people who do not know you. He used the poker game to study the way humans make decisions under pressure.
Dr. Schlicht gathered a team of 14 novice players, aged 19 to 36, who played fewer than 10 hours of poker a year. During the experiment, the 14 participants recruited for the study had to decide whether to call or to fold based on the cards and on the face of their opponents, which was shown to them on the computer, while they were playing a Texas Hold'em poker game. The computer was set to display various facial expressions.
Dr. Schlicht discovered that when the opponents had a threatening or an inexpressive face, the player's decisions were not influenced in any way. However, when they were shown a smiling, trustworthy face, players took longer to decide their next moves, generally making less productive decisions.
“Surprisingly, we find that threatening face information has little influence on wagering behavior, but faces relaying positive emotional characteristics impact people's decisions. People took significantly longer and made more mistakes against emotionally positive opponents,” said the study’s author.
According to these results, Dr. Schlicht concluded “the best ‘poker face’ for bluffing may not be a neutral face, but rather a face that contains emotional correlates of trustworthiness.”
The study was published under the title “Human wagering behavior depends on opponents faces”.
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