Did you know: A smile is a highly nuanced expression and uses 17 different muscles in the face.
Did you also know that smiling has been linked to lower blood pressure and better general well-being? And that it’s harder to frown when you’re looking at someone smiling?
Strange, but true.
Human smiling seems to connect, in some way, with human well-being. There’s even some who argue, that the mere act of smiling itself can make us happier.
Another interesting fact: It was Charles Darwin himself who first posited the idea that the activation of certain facial regions could affect our emotional states. Was Darwin onto something? Can smiling make us happier?
Smiling certainly has an important place in human culture. Studies show that smiles elicit pleasure in the people who perceive them and thereby can act as powerful social rewards. This triggers positive emotions in others and encouraging cooperative behavior.
But with such a significant social role to play, how do we know which smiles are real and which ones aren’t?
Science might have an answer.
While conducting research on the physiology of facial expressions in the mid-19th century, French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne identified distinct types of smiles. Genuine smiles – which later became known as “the Duchenne smile” – involve the contraction of certain eye muscles, in addition to the raising of the corners of the lips.
Later research backed up Guillaume, showing that smiling in which the muscles around the eye contract and raise the cheeks high (Duchenne smiling), is “uniquely associated with positive emotion.”
And it seems we ‘test’ others’ smiles by copying them ourselves, before believing them.
In one smile study, participants observed short videos of people smiling while their facial mimicry was measured with electromyography (EMG) over four facial muscles. The authenticity of the smiles viewed was judged after each trial.
“We recorded the activation of facial muscles in order to test the prediction, based on theories of embodied emotion, that facial mimicry supports, and possibly mediates, judgments of smile authenticity,” explains the researchers.
“Consistent with theories of embodied cognition, activity in these muscles predicted authenticity judgments, suggesting that facial mimicry influences the perception of smiles.”
Furthermore, blocking this mimicry might even make it harder to distinguish ‘real’ smiles from ‘fake’ ones. When other researchers stopped perceivers from being able to move their faces, the subjects seemed to demonstrate poorer recognition of happiness (and, incidentally, disgust) in others’ expressions.
But what about the ‘fake it till you make it’ hypothesis?
There’s a long standing idea that by ‘forcing’ a smile, even when you’re feeling down, you can elevate your mood, and even improve general well-being.
But what’s the truth? Research from The University of South Australia seems to suggest it’s possible, with a recent study showing that even a ‘forced’ smile can have an impact on mood.
The study, published in Experimental Psychology, evaluated the impact of a “covert smile” on perception of face and body expressions. This ‘covert smile’ was induced by having participants hold a pen between their teeth, forcing their facial muscles to approximate a smile.
The research found that the facial muscular activity not only altered the recognition of facial expressions and body language in others, the exercise generated positive emotions in the participants.
“When your muscles say you’re happy, you’re more likely to see the world around you in a positive way,” the researchers say.
“We found that when you forcefully practice smiling, it stimulates the amygdala – the emotional center of the brain – which releases neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state.
“For mental health, this has interesting implications. If we can trick the brain into perceiving stimuli as ‘happy’, then we can potentially use this mechanism to help boost mental health.”
Could a smile even predict long-term happiness?
Be skeptical of this one, but one study suggests happiness over the long term, might be linked in some way to smiling.
The researchers collected yearbook photographs from a women’s college in 1958 and 1960. After analyzing the photographs for “genuine” smiles, researchers made contact with the women in the photographs (who were by then five years older). The researchers found that the “stronger the smiles” exhibited in the yearbook photos, the more likely the women were to be married.
They also checked in again much later – when the women were about 52 years old – and found that the yearbook smilers ultimately reported greater levels of happiness than their more dour sisters did.
While it sounds like a bit of a stretch, similar studies have produced similar conclusions. One group of researchers concluded that smile intensity in earlier photographs could even predict divorce rates later in life.
It’s probably safer to go with a more recent review of the 50 years of smiling research, which seems to find that smiling does, indeed, improve general levels of well-being, if only a little bit.