Smile at a party and people are more likely to remember seeing your face there
When you smile at a party, your facial expression is emotionally consistent with the happy context and as a consequence other guests will in future be more likely to remember that they've seen your face before, and where you were when they saw you. That's according to a team of Italian researchers led by Stefania Righi who have explored how memory for a face is affected by the emotion shown on that face and the congruence between that emotional expression and its surrounding context.
當你在聚會上展現歡顏，你的面部表情是快樂與情緒背景一致，結果使其他客人在未來更可能容易記住以前看過你的臉，容易讓他們辨識看見你在哪裡。根據意大利研究人員特凡裡吉領導的團隊斯已經探索了記憶如何受到臉部情感表達和其周圍環境之間的感情一致性表達所示。
The researchers first presented 30 participants (11 men) with 64 unfamiliar face and scene pairings. The faces were either smiling or fearful and they were either presented alongside an image of a happy scene (e.g. a party) or a fear-inducing scene (e.g. a car crash). The participants' task at this stage was simply to indicate whether each face-scene pairing was emotionally congruent or not.
研究人員首先提出對30名學員（11名男性）展示64張陌生的臉和場景配對。臉上要么微笑或害怕，他們一起呈現在一個幸福的場景的圖像（如派對）或恐懼誘發的場景（如車禍）。參與者在這一階段的任務是簡單地表示每個面孔景像配對感情上一致與否。
Next came the memory test. Different faces (some previously seen, some new) were flashed up on-screen against a black background and the participants had to say whether they'd seen the face before or if it was entirely new. After each face, three scenes appeared of the same genre (e.g. three party scenes), and the participants had to say which specific scene the face had previously appeared alongside.
接下來是記憶測試。不同的面孔（一些是以前看到的，一些是新的）都從黑色背景的屏幕上亮出，參與者必須說出，他們以前是否會看到此臉或者如果它是全新的。每個面孔之後，出現相同類型三個場景（例如三個派對場景），以及參加者必須說出哪個特定場景的臉孔先前一起出現。
Previously seen happy faces were better remembered than fearful faces, but only when they appeared alongside a happy scene. Memory for fearful faces, by contrast, was unaffected by the congruence of the accompanying scene. Why should smiling faces at a party or other happy context be better remembered than a fearful face? The researchers think the combination of a smiling face and happy scene has a broadening effect on observers' attention, enhancing their memories for the face. From a methodological point of view, it's shame the study didn't also feature neutral faces: without these, we can't be certain whether smiling faces in a happy context were enhancing memory or if fearful faces in that context were harming memory, or a bit of both.
只有當他們旁邊出現一個快樂的景象時，先前看到幸福的笑臉比可怕的臉更容易記住。記憶可怕的臉孔，與此相反，是不受所附場景一致性影響。為什麼要笑臉在派對上或其他幸福脈絡裡比一個可怕的臉更容易地記住？研究人員認為笑臉和快樂的場景相結合，擴大對觀察者的注意力影響，提高他們對臉部的記憶。從方法論的角度來看，研究沒有運用中性的面孔使其相形見絀：沒有這些，我們不能肯定笑臉是否在快樂的環境中增強記憶，或者害怕的面孔在這方面進行會損害記憶，或兩者兼而有之。
Figure 3 from Righi et al, 2015.
The researchers also propose that smiling faces have a "unitising effect" whereby the face and its context are bound together in memory. This idea also appeared to be supported by the results: participants were better at remembering the accompanying scenes (happy and fearful) for smiling faces than fearful faces.
研究人員還提出，笑臉有“整合效應”，即臉部鎖定和它的上下脈絡一起的記憶。結果似乎也支持這個想法：參與者記憶笑臉伴隨的場景（高興和恐懼）比可怕的面孔更好。
Put these two key results together and it means that we're particularly likely to remember a smiling face we saw at a party, and the specific context we saw it in. Righi and her colleagues said it made sense for memory to work this way. "A smiling person communicates a social bond and the ability to remember, not only the face identity, but also the context of the first encounter with that 'potential friend', could reflect an adaptive behaviour in view of future social relations." The new results also complement past research on memory for face-name pairings: presented with a name, participants were better at remembering when it was earlier paired with a happy face than a neutral one.
把這兩個關鍵成果結合一起，這意味著我們感到特別容易在聚會上記住看到的笑臉，和在笑臉當中的特殊脈絡事件情況。裡吉和她的同事說，這樣的工作方式是有意義的。 “微笑的人傳達一種社會聯結和記憶能力，不僅在臉孔辨識，同時也與”潛在的朋友因首次會面連結，可能反映了未來社會關係關點的適應性行為。“新的研究結果還補充過去的臉孔名字配對記憶研究：提出了一個名字，參加者在當前面搭配一個快樂的臉孔時的記憶比中性的更好。
Righi, S., Gronchi, G., Marzi, T., Rebai, M., & Viggiano, M. (2015). You are that smiling guy I met at the party! Socially positive signals foster memory for identities and contexts Acta Psychologica, 159, 1-7 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.05.001
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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