What's in a smile

“Smile and the world smiles with you” is a popular saying. But is it really true? And is there a relationship between your facial expression and the way you’re feeling? Can you make others feel the same as you just by adjusting the expression on your face? Corey MacDonald looks at some of the interesting recent research about our faces. \n \n A \n It’s a common assumption to think that our facial expression is a result of the way we feel – that we smile because we’re happy, for example. But researchers have recently found that our facial expression can actually affect the way we feel. When subjects in an experiment were asked to smile, they reported that they felt happier. Similarly, when subjects were asked to frown, they reported that they felt in a bad mood. It’s like the chicken and egg situation: which came first? Although in this case the question is: does the feeling or the facial expression corresponding to that feeling come first? Psychotherapists are using this insight to treat patients with depression, and the early results are promising. We all just need to smile more. \n \n B \n It was Charles Darwin who noticed that smiling occurs in all cultures. Smiling seems to be hardwired into our biology: we begin smiling at five weeks and it’s this smile that makes our parents want to look after us. Smiling probably evolved as a means of helping us connect to others in order to ensure our survival. We are more likely to survive if we can connect to a group than if we’re out there all on our own. Research has shown, for example, that people who cannot smile because of facial paralysis have more difficulty starting and maintaining relationships than people who smile a lot. There’s also lots of interesting evidence which shows that smiling affects our biology in other ways: it produces happiness hormones which make us feel better. \n \n C \n Although smiling is a universal cultural feature, some cultures use smiles differently from others, and in some cultures smiles have different meanings. Generally, in Western cultures, a smile means a desire to show that our intentions are friendly. In other cultures, however, a smile can be used to show aggression. In Western cultures, women smile more than men, but in Asian cultures, the two sexes smile about equally. In some cultures, a smile is a mark of high social status. Leaders in these types of culture are always smiling and look happy. In other cultures, leaders are expected to look solemn and serious. \n \n D \n There’s also an interesting relationship between smiling and gender. Researchers at a university in Canada studied 1,084 heterosexuals and asked them about their attitudes to pictures of people of the opposite sex smiling. They were asked about their immediate gut reactions as to whether the person in the picture was attractive or not, not whether they would make a suitable life partner. The researchers discovered that while men respond more positively to pictures of women who are smiling, women respond less positively to pictures of smiling men. The females in the group preferred their men to be scowling or to have neutral expressions rather than be beaming or grinning, and reported that they found pictures of men smiling to be less attractive because the men looked weak.