A new study finds that a resolutely neutral facial expression may not be the best strategy when playing poker. “Surprisingly, we find that threatening face information has little influence on wagering behavior, but faces relaying positive emotional characteristics impact peoples’ decisions,” write?Erik J. Schlicht, Shinsuke Shimojo, Colin F. Camerer, Peter Battaglia, and Ken Nakayama. Opponents of “emotionally positive” players mistakenly folded more often. The authors conclude that “the best ‘poker face’ for bluffing may not be a neutral face, but rather a face that contains emotional correlates of trustworthiness.” (HT: Joel Schnur) [%comments]
When Is a Poker Face Not a Poker Face?
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I did read the study and understand why and how the faces were selected. My point is that it was not a real faces the participants were presented with but an image of a face. I, of coarse, would be affected by the facial expressions of a persons face, but what face the computor decides to show me can not be relevant. If a positive face were shown on the screen it could not be as a result of the computor being happy about the good cards it was presented with. It was therefor a random face assigned to a random pair of cards. The faces, therefor, should be ignored.
‘At the end of the day, what I found surprising wasn’t that people used face information to modify their wagering, but rather, that everyone used face information in a similar manner!’ < —- now that makes sense