The Power of a Smile to Move You: Complementary Submissiveness in Women's Posture as a Function of Gender Salience and Facial Expression

Extending evidence that nonverbal complementary behavior can occur in dyads to the intergroup domain,the authors predicted that women assume a relatively submissive (narrow) posture when confronted with a male instructor adopting a dominant (broad) posture,but only when he smiles (affiliation motive) and when gender is salient. male affiliation (smiling vs. not smiling) and gender salience were manipulated in study 1 by focusing on sex differences (vs. individual differences) in presentation style,strengthened by the instructor making a sexist remark. as predicted,women adopted a more submissive posture when gender was salient and the male instructor smiled. in study 2,male posture was manipulated (dominant vs. submissive) to examine postural complementarity in women. study 3 replicated the postural effect,especially when the sexist remark is present. this effect was mediated by the instructor's perceived warmth. implications for gender,benevolent sexism,and intergroup power relations are discussed. © 2012 by the society for personality and social psychology,inc.