Study Into Human Behavior

As quoted by my squire brother:   "Guess I should stop smiling before and during fights."

This article is a valid read for everyone that ends up on the field primarily because it goes to show that nonverbal behavior is powerful simply because it affects people on a subconscious level.  While this study focuses on the cause and effect of facial expressions and their predetermination of fight outcomes, it brings into question how serious a competitor needs to be to find success on the tournament field.


http://www.krauslab.com/UFC.Emotion.inpress.pdf


Naturally some discussion started, so here is the break down. Human behavior/psychology is a wide field, please add in if you have something to contribute

• U: I think this paragraph is more pertinent, "Consistent with the researchers' predictions, fighters who smiled more intensely prior to a fight were more likely to lose, to be knocked down in the clash, to be hit more times, and to be wrestled to the ground by their opponent (statistically speaking, the effect sizes here were small to medium). On the other hand, fighters with neutral facial expressions pre-match were more likely to excel and dominate in the fight the next day, including being more likely to win by knock-out or submission."
  because I believe either smiling or snarling probably indicates a bit of inability to focus or lack of training to focus the mind.
  
  Also, this study makes a false cause and effect relationship. All they established is there may be a correlation between facial expression and success rate.

  
  
• K: I scanned the PDF of their study. It seemed to me they correlated smile intensity to not only win/lose, but also effectiveness of their fighting. They even make a note that the fighter who smiled less actually ended up preforming better. Possibly because they perceive their chances as better against a less aggressive opponent. I thought their win/loss chart would show only a slight change, but it looked to me to be significant.
  
  The nice thing about the way this study was conducted is it used data (pictures and statistics) that were already available. They only needed to rate the fighter's smile. The sample size of 152 fighters seems small.
  
  So even if you like to smile in front of an opponent, doing so may end up giving them a real advantage you don't really intend.
  
  http://www.krauslab.com/UFC.Emotion.inpress.pdf

  
  
• U: I still don't think the cause and effect is shown, based on your description. I think it much more likely that losing and smiling are symptoms of a root cause. So as a indicator for chance of success it may be fine, and as a tool for training it may indicate an issue with the trainees confidence, and it may be as you say a bad subliminal queue to the opponent but that is pure speculation and not indicated by the information. If I am correct and one falsely believes it is all about the smile and not about a root cause one is likely to lose anyway.

  
  
• U: This covers all the bases I think. People respond to smiles and smiles could indicate many things other than "Hi, glad to see you."
  
  6. People smile when they're happy. People smile for all sorts of reasons, only one of which is to signal happiness. Ekman describes many kinds of smiles, from the "felt" or true smile to the fear smile, the contempt smile, the dampened smile, the miserable smile, and a number of others. Daniel McNeill, author of The Face: A Natural History, says, "Smiling is innate and appears in infants almost from birth....The first smiles appear two to twelve hours after birth and seem void of content. Infants simply issue them, and they help parents bond. We respond; they don't know what they're doing. The second phase of smiling begins sometime between the fifth week and fourth month. It is the "social smile," in which the infant smiles while fixing its gaze on a person's face."
  
  Whatever their origin or motivation, smiles have a powerful effect on us humans. As McNeill points out, "Though courtroom judges are equally likely to find smilers and nonsmilers guilty, they give smilers lighter penalties, a phenomenon called the 'smile-leniency effect.'"
  -- http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3123.html
  
  So we need to knock the smile out of you, not just get you to focus on not smiling.
  
  I think a study would also show that the person who is concerned about their opponents well fare, apologizing for illegal shots, or stopping to chat during competition is even more likely to lose.
  
  
  
  

  M: Throwing in some basics from animal behavioral and human physiology courses I’ve taken over the past few years.   

  
  

  People try to assert their dominance in many different ways; their nonverbal behavior is powerful simply because it affects people on a subconscious level.  It is not resisted as much because it’s less noticed than verbal aggression.  Primate behavior is a good indicator of how human hierarchical structures work as well, which is why that study that dealt with multiple chimps attacking an alpha leader was such an odd behavior for a wild primate group.  By this I mean there is no gain to attacking in groups because it injures all the most dominant, group protecting males.  Though it does show a nice dichotomy between instinct and intelligence, in relation to adaptive behavior.   

  
  

  I know the study focused on facial expressions, by I’m curious about the individual’s body postures as well.  Common dominant human behavior includes physical positions that take up a lot of space or make a person look bigger.   For instance, stretching arms out to one’s sides or placing your hands on your hips; extending legs or widening knees in standing or seated positions; and standing or sitting on a table while other people sit lower down.  Also to tie it back to facial expressions, angry like eyebrows drawn across the face in a long, thick line.  Think of military recruitment posters and the serious faces of the soldiers in gear. Do the fighters in this study tend toward any of these postures pre-fight or are they all staged, making the fighter respond to other stimulus and thus respond unintentionally to non-verbal behavior from other sources rather than their opponent.

  
  

  Submissive displays vary from head tilting, bowing, and nodding to demurely crossing ankles or pressing knees together are also an awesome look at expected female behavior.  The dichotomy here is that it’s not a dominant move for women to sit with their legs wide.  When men display these traits it incites more aggressive dominant behavior from other males.  Weirdly enough crosses arms isn’t always a good behavior either since depending on the situation arm crossing is perceived as submissive because it makes a person look smaller and self-protective.  I’m not sure on this one because it does make you look smaller and less outwardly aggressive, but I guess this is also where the facial expression would definitely matter.