ABSTRACT
Research strongly supports women's superior nonverbal sensitivity (Hall, 1978; Lieberman, Rigo, & Campain, 1988; Rotter & Rotter, 1988; Zuckerman, Hall, DeFrank, & Rosenthal, 1976). Across a range of emotional displays, women are more accurate decoders offacial ex-
Results showed that men were significantly less accurate in decoding non-Duchenne smiles than were women. Specifically, men were less likely than women to correctly label false smiles t( 58) = 2.03, P < .05. Male participants underestimated the number of non-Duchenne smiles and overestimated the occurrence of Duchenne or felt smiles. In sum, men were less accurate decoders of different smile types shown by women and the errors were in the direction of seeing any smile by a woman as indicating genUine positive feeling. This finding corroborates previous research that found that men mistakenly interpret women's friendliness as indication of sexual interest (Abbey 1982; Abbey & Melby, 1986).
