In a study done at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, 196 college students, ages 17 to 44, played an online prisoner's dilemma game. During the first round, a virtual opponent cooperated with the participant's playing strategy and each shared the winnings. During the second round, the opponent abandoned the participant's strategy and earned a a larger winning. After both rounds, participants were shown pictures of the virtual female opponent, who had one of four expressions: neutral, neutral with blush, embarrassment, or embarrassment with blush.
The participants were then asked to do a "trust task" (not sure what that is, but it involves giving the opponent a certain amount of prize money) at the end of the game, and they judged the blushing opponent less harshly for abandoning their strategy, believed that she would be less likely to desert them again, and even gave her more prize money than if the non-blushing image of her was shown.
So basically, if there were a scale of honesty based on the four facial expressions:
embarrassment + blush > neutral + blush > embarrassment > neutral
As the study's lead author simply puts it, "After you do something wrong, people like you more when you blush." Since the test was only done with a virtual female opponent, I'm assuming this only works for women ;) lucky us. Apparently, people interpret blushing as a sign that you care about others' opinions, which makes sense to me. Found this interesting article on the Body Odd and learned something new again.
So what do you think? For those of us who turn pink at the drop of a dime, maybe it isn't so bad after all? People may like it more than you think!
14 comments:
This is really fun information! That top photo of the little girl is adorable! I am not much of a blusher :( I wonder if it can be learned!
well, I am a blusher and its the first time I fel good about it, lol!
lol....never really thought about it.
I just found your blog and am your newest follower. This blog post is darling! Thanks for creating such a fab blog full of inspiration.
Where do people come up with ideas for these studies? They actually get paid for this too!
Amazing.
Wonder if I can make myself blush?
Cute blog post! Love the topic and that they studied it! Love the lariat of roses and branches, but I think I would "blush" when I wore it! :)
Carol from Carol's Jewelry Orchard
I probably SHOULD blush more often than I actually do (◡‿◡✿)
Very interesting!!!
Hmmmm....good to know :)
It is AMAZING to me the things people spend time on to research... I LOVE research and enjoy reading these things just surprising anyone would think to research this.
You always have the most interesting posts!
Very interesting. Wonder who comes up with these studies.
Very interesting.....would never have thought to study that! How fun!
Your blog is always so pretty! Beautiful collection of pictures yet again!
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