Original paper title was "How head posture affects perceived cooperativeness: A
cross-cultural perspective."<p>"Friendly" in the HN title is inaccurate in my opinion. The paper asked participants to rate a person's perceived cooperativeness, not friendliness. While it's true that cooperation is a component of being friendly, the two are not identical.<p>For example, "he is cooperating with authorities" is very different than "he is friendly with the authorities."
Yes, this posture has been known for a while now <a href="https://compote.slate.com/images/6db011f7-26e2-43a1-8f31-0cf6b65809e2.jpeg?width=1280&rect=1560x1040&offset=0x0" rel="nofollow">https://compote.slate.com/images/6db011f7-26e2-43a1-8f31-0cf...</a>
It's my guess that it is rare that someone decides the tilt of their head. Posture is cultural, it varies from culture to culture. In industrialized nations most people have excessively curved spines and as a result most heads tilt back, as shown in the first photo. When people have balanced posture the face is vertical, as in the second photo. The study gives another reason (an appearance of cooperation) to balance your posture, so your bones are on the axial line of gravity.
I'm 5'4" and over the decades I've noticed occasionally that tall people think I'm smiling or happy when I'm not. The white boxes on the faces in the article obscure this but the girl appears to be frowning when her head is tilted up and smiling when it is tilted down. This is the natural result of end sides of the mouth curving back toward the cheeks. This is what I first thought of when I read the headline and was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the article or other comments here.
Seems like head posture alone wouldn’t be enough, body posture and facial expressions are a package deal in my mind. In fact a quick counterpoint to the chin down seems more cooperative/ friendly, Robert Patrick as the T1000. When I looked at the right most picture, I didn’t get more cooperative, I got Robert Patrick / ‘come at me bro’ vibes.
Amazing to see people do research about something so obvious. The postures are assertion and submissiveness. Placing oneself above another or below by head angle. It isn't just humans either. You see it in primates, dogs and cats.<p>The submissive gesture essentially communicates "I am not primed to physically attack."
One thing to note that these “posture” studies have a huge issue with reproducibility. In addition, even when they may have statistical significance, the effect size is so small that is is often of no real world significance (other than selling clicks and ads).
I'm Asian. The authors of the paper are Asian. But this:<p>> “a possible explanation may be that Asians have a greater tendency to live in collective societies and are perhaps more likely to emphasize group dynamics rather than individual prowess”<p>sounds racist AF
my take on the first panel of images does give off different qualities<p>* Condescending
* Neutral/Trustworthy
* Scheming!<p>I am a taller person at around ~ 1.95m, so that may influence my own biases.