The shadow of your smile

For all our talking, we humans indulge in a wide array of nonverbal signals—smiles, gazes, hand gestures, nods, body stance.

Psychology professor Judith Hall has spent thirty years examining how nonverbal communication relates to gender and power issues. Currently, she's studying smiling: why and how men and women smile, what types of situations cause them to smile in particular ways.

Most people are aware that women smile more than men, says Hall. But the reason why, she says, is "very complex and very unanswered."

Women may smile because they're prompted by others. "People smile more at women," Hall says. "And once somebody expects something of you, chances are greater you'll produce that behavior."

Or perhaps women smile more because they're less powerful. But this theory has problems, says Hall. Women tend to establish close distances to others during conversations—a trait of powerful people, not weak ones. And smiling a lot is not a common trait of the weak.

"I don't know where gender differences come from," says Hall. "But I don't think, as a general rule, they're from power differences."Nonverbal communication differences are difficult to study, says Hall, because many nonverbal cues don't have fixed meanings. For instance, smiles can be sincere, mocking, apologetic, wry. Nodding can imply submissiveness; it can also be used to reassure, or keep another person talking.

To pinpoint the meaning of nonverbal cues in the smiling studies—which measure the nonverbal responses of subjects experiencing situations that elicit different emotional states—Hall and her graduate students also ask the subjects questions about how they feel.

Hall says her research, sometimes attacked as a "waste" of federal dollars by watchdog groups, has particular relevance now. She remembers the response of a National Science Foundation official who awarded one of her grants when he was quizzed about the research's seriousness on Good Morning America.

"He said, 'Wouldn't you like to study the nonverbal cues that might tell you who's a terrorist in an airport?'" she recalls.This research also has relevance to public life and the workplace, Hall says. "It's important to know what people are communicating with subtle and implicit behaviors."

Zapping the earth clean

PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and BTEX (which stands for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xzylene) are cancer-causing petroleum products that pollute soil and water around the world.

Abundant near gasworks, wood-preservation plants, petroleum and industrial areas, and waste-disposal sites, these contaminants are notoriously persistent because of their stable chemical structure, low solubility, and high level of mobility. Existing cleanup methods are expensive and often unsuccessful.

At some sites, oxygen is used to break down the contaminants. But current methods of delivering oxygen to contaminated soil, such as well aeration, often don't distribute the oxygen evenly.

Akram Alshawabkeh, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, thinks electricity can help. His idea is to run electric currents through polluted soil, thus splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The freed oxygen molecules would be evenly distributed throughout the soil, providing nourishment for microorganisms, which would then be able to break down pollutants.

Though lab results for the National Science Foundation—funded project have been promising, Alshawabkeh says, it will likely be a few years before the method is field-tested.

He is also studying using electricity to break down trace amounts of explosives in soil and attack chlorinated solvents.

A selling feeling

What makes a successful salesperson?

Assistant marketing professor Felicia Lassk focuses not on numbers, but on less tangible elements, such as how psychologically involved salespeople are with their job. Or whether they have emotional intelligence, the ability to monitor feelings—their own and others'—and use those perceptions to guide their thoughts and actions.

Lassk (who, before coming to academia, did market research for Disney) says salespeople's psychological involvement with their job has a big impact on their motivation and performance.

It seems job involvement leads to "organizational citizenship" behaviors that go above and beyond what's outlined in the job description, that aren't compensated but are key to an organization's successful performance.

"If you're being a good salesperson," says Lassk, "you go out of your way to be a good sport, help other colleagues, help out the customer, and look out for the best interests of your company."

As for emotional intelligence, Lassk says, research shows "salespeople who are emotionally intelligent are going to outsell others by double. And the other exciting thing is that people can be trained to become more emotionally intelligent."

Now Lassk is working to define what it means to be emotionally intelligent in the context of sales management, and what impact it has on performance.

Working with marketing colleagues Gloria Barczak, an NU associate professor, and Jay Mulki, from the University of South Florida, Lassk is also studying how the emotional intelligence of sales teams impacts new product development.

"Most of what professors in business are looking for is how to increase performance," says Lassk. "That's the Holy Grail.

"So we're asking: How do we get people to be better performers? Job involvement is one way. And training people in emotional intelligence is another."