The study focuses on the effects of smiling on children’s evaluation of adults and on accuracy of learning and recall. Thirty children (15 males and 15 females) are randomly assigned to three...

The study focuses on the effects of smiling on children’s evaluation of adults and on accuracy of learning and recall. Thirty children (15 males and 15 females) are randomly assigned to three conditions. Videos of the same teacher reading the same story are created. In the first condition, the teacher smiles 60 percent of the time; in the second condition, the teacher smiles 30 percent of the time; and in the third condition, the teacher does not smile. After viewing the tape, the children are (a) given a learning test scored on the number of correct answers to questions about the story, and (b) asked to provide a rating on a 1–5 scale of how much they like the teacher (assuming an ordinal scale). Two weeks later, the children are tested for retention of material from the story (scored on the number of correct answers to questions about the story).