Through a Glass Darkly: Effects of Smiling and Visibility on Recognition and Avoidance in Passing Encounters

This study examined the patterns of recognition and avoidance in pedestrians as they walked past a confederate. The first purpose of the study was to replicate the results of an earlier experiment (Patterson, Webb, & Schwartz, 2002) showing that the addition of a smile from the confederate greatly increased pedestrians’ responsiveness. A second purpose was to determine if confederates’ visibility (wearing sunglasses or not) in these passing encounters would affect pedestrians’ reactions and provide insight regarding the functions involved in these events. Specifically, the effects of condition (avoid, look‐only, and look and smile), sex of confederate, and sunglasses on passing pedestrians were examined in a field study on 183 participants. A log‐linear analysis of the results provided support for the first hypothesis with more glances, smiles, and nods in the look and smile condition than in the avoid and look‐only conditions. The hypotheses that confederates who wore sunglasses would receive fewer glances than those who did not and that this effect would be greater for the male confederate were not supported. There was, however, a significant Sunglasses × Sex of Confederate effect on smiles, with pedestrians smiling more at the male confederate when he wore sunglasses than when he did not and smiling less at the female confederate when she wore sunglasses than when she did not. The contrasting effect of sunglasses for the male and female confederate was discussed in terms of the different functions of a smile in pedestrian encounters.