by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London

How can you tell if someone looks trustworthy? Could it have anything to do with their facial expression? Some new research suggests that people are less likely to trust someone if their smile looks fake. Of course, that seems like common sense – you’d never think to yourself ‘wow, what a phoney’ and then decide to trust someone anyway. But we’re talking about very subtle clues here. The kind of thing that might only produce a bit of a gut feeling, or you might never be conscious of at all.

To do this experiment, researchers at Cardiff University told volunteers to pick someone to play a trust game with. The scientists told the volunteers to make their choice based on a short video of each person smiling – but they didn’t know the scientists could control certain aspects of each smile, and could make some smiles look more genuine than others.

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