Keep on smiling...? On the sex-specific connections between smiling duration and perceived speaker attributes in business pitches: an exploration of the gender-specific connections between smiling duration and perceived speaker attributes in business pitches

We present the results of a perception experiment that uses audio-only speech stimuli to investigate the effect of smiling on speaker traits related to charm and persuasion. Nineteen listeners participated in the experiment and rated excerpts of business pitches given by 18 speakers, 9 males and 9 females, who represented three different groups: non-smilers, occasional smilers, permanent smilers. We find that occasional smilers do best, regardless of gender, when it comes to the charming effect. Men also hardly lose their charm if they smile permanently. The persuasion effect, by contrast, requires fewer smiles. Women should actually not smile at all in order to sound most persuasive. However, the results also show that women already sound more (occasionally) smiling even when they are not smiling at all and, moreover, findings suggest the existence of a perceptual normalization effect for permanently smiling speakers. The results are discussed with regard to their implications for practical presentation coaching and follow-up studies.