Displaying nonverbal pride after a boxing match leads to judgements of success. However, it is not clear the extent to which this effect generalises nor whether it can override competing information. An experimental design had 214 participants watch two boxing clips that were manipulated so that one was evenly matched and the other had a fighter with an advantage (i.e. demonstrating more skill). Nonverbal behaviour at the completion of the fight varied between fighters (pride versus neutral). When the fight was evenly matched, the fighters displaying nonverbal pride were judged as winning the fight, but the fighter did not garner increased social influence. In contrast, when fighters demonstrated superior skill, the more skilled fighters who displayed neutral postures rather than the less-skilled ones displaying pride were judged as winning the fight, and the skilled fighters garnered increased social influence. These results suggest that in a boxing context, a pride bias works in evenly matched scenarios, but when differences in skill are more clearly present, a skill bias is more pronounced and leads to more social influence. Furthermore, perceptions of skill were associated with judgments of victory across stimuli, suggesting the importance of skill perceptions in such judgments.

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals has received and continues to receive much attention from emotion researchers and behavioural scientists. However, the common misconception that Darwin advocated for the universality of emotional reactions has led to a host of unfounded and discredited claims promoted by \'body language experts\' on both traditional and social media. These \'experts\' receive unparalleled public attention. Thus, rather than being presented with empirically supported findings on non-verbal behaviour, the public is exposed to \'body language analysis\' of celebrities, politicians and defendants in criminal trials. In this perspective piece, we address the misinformation surrounding non-verbal behaviour. We also discuss the nature and scope of statements from body language experts, unpacking the claims of the most viewed YouTube video by a body language expert, comparing these claims with actual research findings, and giving specific attention to the implications for the justice system. We explain how body language experts use (and misuse) Darwin\'s legacy and conclude with a call for researchers to unite their voices and work towards stopping the spread of misinformation about non-verbal behaviour.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, defendants and witnesses (as well as the prosecution and defense counsel) may wear medical face masks to prevent the spread of the virus. Alternatively, courtrooms proceedings may take place virtually. In this article, we discuss how these deviations from normal procedures may affect jurors\' lie detection ability and decision-making. Although research addressing this specific question does not exist, we are able to formulate an informed view based on the extensive deception literature. Since nonverbal signs of deception in the face and body are virtually absent, we conclude that medical face mask-wearing or virtual courtroom proceedings will not hamper jurors\' lie detection abilities. If jurors can hear the speech well, they may become better at detecting deception if they pay more attention to speech content, which may occur as a result of mask-wearing in the courtroom.

Oral Corrective Feedback is a widely used teaching strategy that has been found to help language acquisition. The factors that contribute to its effectiveness, however, remain elusive. In this study, the role of smiling during teachers\' OCF provision is investigated in intact language classrooms by modifying the analytical framework developed by Lyster and Ranta (Stud Second Lang Acquis, 19(1):37-66, 1997), which determines OCF effectiveness by the success of the learner uptake. In addition to the feedback strategies used, this study examines teacher smiling during the feedback instances, and whether they were genuine or polite smiles. The Facial Action Coding System (Ekman & Friesen, Environ Psych Nonver, 1(1), 56-75, 1976; Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, Facial Action Coding System: The Manual on CD ROM. Salt Lake City, UT: Research Nexus division of Network Information Research Corporation, 2002) is utilized to operationalize smile genuineness. Significant findings indicate that when teacher smiling is genuine, learners are more likely to correct their errors, while polite smiles do not have the same effect.

Person identification at airports requires the matching of a passport photograph to its bearer. One aim of this process is to find identity impostors, who use valid identity documents of similar-looking people to avoid detection. In psychology, this process has been studied extensively with static pairs of face photographs that require identity match (same person shown) versus mismatch (two different people) decisions. However, this approach provides a limited proxy for studying how other factors, such as nonverbal behaviour, affect this task. The current study investigated the influence of body language on facial identity matching within a virtual reality airport environment, by manipulating activity levels of person avatars queueing at passport control. In a series of six experiments, detection of identity mismatches was unaffected when observers were not instructed to utilise body language. By contrast, under explicit instruction to look out for unusual body language, these cues enhanced detection of mismatches but also increased false classification of matches. This effect was driven by increased activity levels rather than body language that simply differed from the behaviour of the majority of passengers. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.

One of the main diagnostic features of individuals with autism spectrum disorders is nonverbal behaviour difficulties during naturalistic social interactions. The \'Interactional Heterogeneity Hypothesis\' of ASD proposes that the degree to which individuals share a common ground substantially influences their ability to achieve smooth social interactions.
To test this hypothesis, we filmed 29 autistic and 29 matched typically developed adults engaged in several conversational tasks. Windowed cross-lagged correlations were computed using the time series of motion energy of both individuals in a dyad. These coefficients were then compared across the three dyad types that were homo- or heterogenous with respect to diagnosis: pairs of two autistic individuals, two typically developed individuals or pairs of one autistic and one typically developed person.
We found that all dyad types achieved above-chance interpersonal synchrony, but that synchrony was more expressed in typical dyads compared to both autistic and mixed dyads.
The method presented here provides only one, albeit objective and robust, approach to explore synchrony. The methodological choices as well as the lack of consideration for other communication modalities may limit our interpretation of the findings. Moreover, the sample size is small with respect to exploring associations between synchrony and various outcome and social skill measures.
The present results do not provide support for the Interactional Heterogeneity Hypothesis given that autistic individuals do not coordinate better when interacting with another autistic individual, compared to when interacting with a typical individual.

OBJECTIVE: Interpersonal dysfunction is a central feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD), and the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been shown to impact patients\' behaviour in numerous ways. Nonverbal signals such as the coordination of body movement (nonverbal synchrony) are associated with the success of interpersonal exchanges and could thus be influenced by features of BPD and by the administration of OT.
METHODS: We explored the effect of intranasal OT (inOT) on nonverbal synchrony in sixteen patients with BPD and fifteen healthy controls (CTL) randomly assigned to two double-blind clinical interviews under inOT and placebo (PL).
METHODS: Nonverbal synchrony was assessed by automated video-analyses of subject\'s and interviewer\'s body movement. Lagged cross-correlations were used to objectively quantify coordination in dyads.
RESULTS: Synchrony was higher than pseudosynchrony (= synchrony expected by chance), and there was a differential effect of inOT between groups: While healthy controls displayed increased synchrony under inOT, patients with BPD showed low levels of synchrony under inOT. Additionally, patient\'s synchrony was negatively associated with self-reported childhood trauma.
CONCLUSIONS: Nonverbal synchrony in clinical interviews is influenced by inOT, and this effect depends on subject\'s diagnosis. In line with previous research implying positive associations between nonverbal synchrony and relationship quality, inOT led to an increase of synchrony in healthy controls, but not in patients with BPD. Low levels of synchrony under inOT in patients and its association with childhood trauma suggest that additional mechanisms such as rejection sensitivity might mediate BPD patients\' nonverbal behaviour.
CONCLUSIONS: Intranasal oxytocin (inOT) attenuated nonverbal synchrony - a proxy for relationship quality - in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), while it increased nonverbal synchrony in healthy controls (CTL). Available models (rejection sensitivity; social salience) suggest that inOT may alter the way patients with BPD assess social situations, and this alteration is expressed by changes in nonverbal coordination. Patients with BPD display low levels of synchrony which are even below expected pseudosynchrony based on chance. The association between self-reported childhood trauma and lower synchrony in BPD was most evident for patient\'s imitative behaviour: Under inOT, patients with high scores of childhood trauma refrained from imitating their interview partners. Study limitations include small sample sizes and limited data on the psychological impact of the clinical interviews.

The controlled semantic cognition framework proposes that the ventral anterior temporal lobes (vATL) in the left and right hemisphere function as an integrated hub region supporting transmodal semantic representations. The clinical evidence for the transmodal function of vATL is largely based on studies of semantic dementia patients with severe anomia, who also show impaired performance on nonverbal tasks that involve the retrieval of knowledge about objects and their prototypical use, such as the production of tool use pantomimes. Yet, evidence from patients with apraxia and functional neuroimaging studies in healthy adults does not implicate vATL in pantomime production. We, therefore, compared semantic retrieval of object-action associations for overt verb and pantomime production from picture and word stimuli. Our results show that, independent of stimulus modality, the retrieval of object-action associations for verb, but not pantomime, production is related to activity in bilateral vATL. Bilateral vATL activation was also observed for meaningless verbal responses that did not require the retrieval of object-action associations. Taken together, our results suggest that bilateral vATL is not engaged in the retrieval of object-action associations per se, but rather supports semantic representations that are functionally specialized for language. These findings have implications for the semantic cognition framework and our understanding of the dependence of conceptual knowledge on language.

A variety of treatment outcomes in chronic pain are influenced by patient-clinician rapport. Patients often report finding it difficult to explain their pain, and this potential obstacle to mutual understanding may impede patient-clinician rapport. Previous research has argued that the communication of both patients and clinicians is facilitated by the use of pain-related images in pain assessments. This study investigated whether introducing pain-related images into pain assessments would strengthen various components of patient-clinician rapport, including relative levels of affiliation and dominance, and interpersonal coordination between patient and clinician behaviour. Videos of 35 pain assessments in which pain images were present or absent were used to code behavioural displays of patient and clinician rapport at fixed intervals across the course of the assessment. Mixed modelling was used to examine patterns of patient and clinician affiliation and dominance with consultation type (Image vs Control) as a moderator. When pain images were present, clinicians showed more affiliation behaviour over the course of the consultation and there was greater correspondence between the affiliation behaviour of patient and clinician. However, relative levels of patient and clinician dominance were unaffected by the presence of pain images in consultations. Additional analyses revealed that clinicians responded directly to patients\' use of pain images with displays of affiliation. Based on the results of this study, we recommend further investigation into the utility and feasibility of incorporating pain images into pain assessments to enhance patient-clinician communication.

Happiness can be expressed through smiles. Happiness can also be expressed through physical displays that without context, would appear to be sadness (tears, downward turned mouths, and crumpled body postures) and anger (clenched jaws, snarled lips, furrowed brows, and pumped fists). These seemingly incongruent displays of happiness, termed dimorphous expressions, we propose, represent and communicate expressers\' motivational orientations. When participants reported their own aggressive expressions in positive or negative contexts, their expressions represented positive or negative emotional experiences respectively, imbued with appetitive orientations (feelings of wanting to go). In contrast, reported sad expressions, in positive or negative contexts, represented positive and negative emotional experiences respectively, imbued with consummatory orientations (feelings of wanting to pause). In six additional experiments, participant observers interpreted that aggression displayed in positive contexts signalled happy-appetitive states, and sadness displayed in positive contexts signalled happy-consummatory states. Implications for the production and interpretation of emotion expressions are discussed.