| 🤝 A Special Collab: Why We Buy <> Science Says Today's newsletter looks a bit different for a smart reason.
Fellow behavioral science geek Thomas McKinlay from Science Says is taking over to explore how you should smile to increase conversions or sales.
But before we dive in…
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(31,305 other evidence-based marketers already love this newsletter, including us.) Read time: 3.1 minutes ⚡ |
Thomas here, thank you for having me, Katelyn! This is a 3-min. insight into the signature style of my newsletter, Science Says. Every week, my team of marketing PhDs and I turn a new scientific discovery in marketing into a no fluff practical insight just like this. If you like it, you can join 31k fellow evidence-based marketers and subscribe for $0 here. Let's dive in!
📈 Recommendation Change how you and your employees smile in your pictures based on what you want to convey: - Use a broad, large smile if you want to be seen as warm and approachable. People will be more likely to take small actions of support (e.g. sharing a post, subscribing)
- Use a slight smile to be perceived as competent and trustworthy. People will be more likely to buy from or in invest in you
🎓 Findings - Broad smiles in pictures (wide smile with teeth showing) make people seem more friendly and approachable, increasing the low-commitment support they receive (e.g. engaging on social media).
- Narrow smiles (teeth not showing or barely showing) make people seem more competent, but less friendly, increasing sales or the financial support they receive.
- As part of 4 experiments with 943 participants and an analysis of 324 projects on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform, scientists found that:
- The same person was judged as 16.6% warmer but 8.3% less competent when pictured with a broad smile (vs a slight smile)
- Creators on Kickstarter received:
- 2.1x more shares of their project on Facebook (475 vs 225 shares, on average) when they had a broad smile
- 112% more funding ($21,560 vs $10,179), and each contributor invested 30% more on average, when they had a slight smile
- The effect changes depending on how risky the context is:
- In low-risk situations (e.g. choosing a tour guide) broad smiles are more beneficial and less harmful. A broad smile seems even warmer, while it has little or no negative impact on feelings of competence
- In high-risk situations (e.g. choosing a doctor) broad smiles are more harmful and not helpful at all. A broad smile hurts the feeling of competence, without making them more approachable.
🧠 Why it works - When looking at a photo of someone, we immediately form a first impression of how we perceive them.
- Smiles are a facial expression we use universally across cultures to form quick judgements.
- We perceive someone with a broader smile as being more sociable, so they seem more warm and approachable.
- But we also associate broader smiles with less aggression, competitiveness, and performance. Slight or neutral smiles, on the other hand, seem more competent.
- When we buy something, there's a risk that it could be a bad purchase. We feel there's less risk of something bad happening if we're working with someone competent (compared to someone who is friendly), so we are more willing to buy from someone we consider competent.
- On the other hand, smaller actions are less risky (e.g. subscribing to Science Says for more insights like these - it's free and you can unsubscribe anytime 😉), so we're more focused on enjoying the experience, leading us to prefer engaging with someone we find warm or approachable.
✋ Limitations - The study only used static images of faces. It's unclear if the effect is the same for videos or gifs, or whether including someone's hands or other body parts would change how the effect works.
- The smiles used in the research were pre-tested and all considered to be genuine. It's unclear how people react to smiles they consider fake or exaggerated.
😁 How I (should) use this - An example of where I apply this research is on my LinkedIn profile. I'm smiling broadly in my profile picture, hopefully coming off as friendly and approachable. This should encourage visitors to take the low-risk action of following me and subscribing to my newsletter, Science Says.
- However, in other parts of our website, for example when we are promoting our Playbooks (e.g. for Ecommerce, SaaS, Pricing, AI) or subscription to our Platform with 250+ insights, I should probably stick to using a slight smile instead (note to self: it's time to book a new photoshoot, stop putting it off).
- Our chief academic advisor, Prof. Stefano Puntoni of Wharton - University of Pennsylvania, is a great example of the right smile to use in competence-building situations.
📖 Research Wang, Z., Mao, H., Li, Y. J., & Liu, F. Smile big or not? Effects of smile intensity on perceptions of warmth and competence. Journal of Consumer Research (February 2017).
Thomas McKinlay, Founder of Science Says
Turning the latest science into 3min practical marketing insights Thank you for having me, Katelyn!
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