B L Razdan
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” (Thich Nhat Hanh)
“Being amused tends to make you smile and smiling tends to make you feel amused.” (Daniel Kahneman)
Throughout the world, there is one gesture that every person recognizes as a sign of happiness and friendship: the smile. Smiles are incredibly simple acts, but these carry a lot of meaning. Since smiles are so intriguing, these have been studied by science to figure out how and why there is a huge impact on people. When it comes to the science of a smile, not only does it express your happiness, but it can make you happy as well.
Smiling is a universal human expression that we all use to express emotions and feelings. It speaks all languages, overcomes all differences, and holds all space. It is something that two people can always share and instantly connect. Your smile is representative of your being and the unique role you play in the world. Your smile is unlike any other. So, smile as wide and hard as you can. “Smiling is a fantastic thing. If you smile, your whole day will be smiling. If you don’t smile, the day will not smile. Make it a habit to smile. It creates a lot of friendship, a lot of happiness.” (APJ Abdul Kalam)
Smiling comes naturally to us, but there is more going on behind the scenes than we might realize. There is a lot to the science of smiling. The muscles involved in smiling are controlled by different parts of the brain than those used for frowning or other negative facial expressions. This allows us to have greater control over our smiles than any other facial expression, which makes them unique and more powerful than any other form of communication. Speaking biologically, a smile begins in our sensory corridors. The ear collects a whispered word. The eyes spot an old friend on the station platform. The hand feels the pressure of another hand. This emotional data funnels to the brain, exciting the left anterior temporal region in particular, then smoulders to the surface of the face, where two muscles, standing at attention, are roused into action: The zygomatic major, which resides in the cheek, tugs the lips upward, and the orbicularis oculi, which encircles the eye socket, squeezes the outside corners into the shape of a crow’s foot. The entire event is short – typically lasting from two-thirds of a second to four seconds – and those who witness it often respond by mirroring the action, and smiling back.
Other muscles can simulate a smile, but only the peculiar tango of the zygomatic major and the orbicularis oculi produces a genuine expression of positive emotion. Psychologists call this the “Duchenne smile,” and most consider it the sole indicator of true enjoyment. The name is a nod to French anatomist Guillaume Duchenne, who studied emotional expression by stimulating various facial muscles with electrical currents. (The technique hurt so much, it’s been said, that Duchenne performed some of his tests on the severed heads of executed criminals.) In his 1862 book Mecanisme de la PhysionomieHumaine, Duchenne wrote that the zygomatic major can be willed into action, but that only the “sweet emotions of the soul” force the orbicularis oculi to contract. “Its inertia, in smiling,” Duchenne wrote, “unmasks a false friend.”
A true smile can’t be faked. It is one of the most reliable forms of communication, and the effect it has on others is powerful. It is capable of cutting through layers and impacting others on a personal and emotional level. A smile is also capable of changing the world one interaction at a time. “A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.” (William Arthur Ward)
Charles Darwin was one of the first to suggest that our expressions may actually intensify our feelings. This theory is commonly known as the ‘feedback loop’ or even ‘facial feedback hypothesis’. Simply using the same muscles as smiling will put one in an instant happy mood. That is because use of those muscles is a part of how the brain evaluates mood. A smiling expression feeds on how we experience mood, therefore making us feel happier or even a joke seems funnier.
Smiling elevates our mood and creates a sense of well-being. As behavioural psychologist Sarah Stevenson writes: “Each time you smile you throw a little feel-good party in your brain.” The notorious party animals dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin start whooping it up when you smile. And a bonus: those endorphins serve as natural pain relievers and act as the body’s own opiates. Smiling induces more pleasure in the brain, more than the chocolate. According to Ron Gutman, the author of Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act, “British researchers found that one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 bars of chocolate.” The span of a person’s smile can predict lifespan. A 2010 Wayne State University research project studied pre-1950s major league player baseball cards. According to Gutman, “The researchers found that the span of a player’s smile could actually predict the span of his life. Players who didn’t smile in their pictures lived an average of only 72.9 years, where players with beaming smiles lived an average of almost 80 years.” Is a smile worth seven extra years of life to you?
Even a forced smile can boost your mood. Usually, we think that a positive experience is what makes us smile. While this is true, it’s also true that merely deciding to smile can provide a positive experience. As Buddhist author Thich Nhat Hanh says: “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” Even research subjects directed to place a pencil between their teeth, forcing their lips into a smile, actually feel better. Odd, but true. Put On a Happy Face; you will actually feel happier. Smiling makes you seem courteous, likable, and competent. Those first two qualities seem logical, but smiling makes you seem competent? Speculation: If you look sad or anxious, perhaps others wonder if you know what you are doing. So perhaps a simple smile might be a shortcut to business success.
Smiling is contagious inasmuch as our smiles are also responsive to our environment. Our emotions are expressed through our smiles, and when we are exposed to negativity, it affects our mental state and the way others receive it. Our smiles can betray us because they can’t be faked and tell the true story. That’s why this quote: “Use your smile to change the world, don’t let the world change your smile” is so beautiful. By choosing to see positivity, and focusing on your many reasons to smile, you can begin to infuse that love among those immediately around you. This creates a local effect that then amplifies as each affected person becomes an advocate and impacts those immediately around them. We need more smiles in this world. Be a brand ambassador of smiles. You never know the real effect a smile will have on the lives of others!
Regarding the science of a smile, it has also been found that you can “fake it till you make it.” That means that if you aren’t feeling particularly happy at any given moment, smiling even a little can cause your brain to release the feel-good hormones that will circulate throughout your entire body. It won’t take long before you are feeling truly happier and have a genuine smile on your face.
The science of smiling: What happens to our brain when we smile? Let’s say you experience a positive situation and you see a friend you haven’t met in a long time. This means that neuronal signals travel from the cortex of your brain to the brainstem (the oldest part of our brains). From there, the cranial muscle carries the signal further towards the smiling muscles in your face. It sounds simple enough, yet, that’s only where it starts. Once the smiling muscles in our face contract, there is a positive feedback loop that now goes back to the brain and reinforces our feeling of joy. To put more succinctly: “Smiling stimulates our brain’s reward mechanisms in a way that even chocolate, a well-regarded pleasure-inducer, cannot match.” Smiling then, seems to give us the same happiness that exercising induces terms of how our brain responds. In short: our brain feels good and tells us to smile, we smile and tell our brain it feels good and so forth. That’s why in a recent research scientists concluded: “that smiling can be as stimulating as receiving up to 16,000 Pounds Sterling in cash.” Whenever we smile, there are two potential muscles we activate. The first one is the zygomaticus major, which controls the corners of our mouth. Whenever only this muscle is activated, it is not actually a genuine smile. Scientists call this the “social” smile. The second muscle, known to show sincerity is the obicularisocculi and it encircles our eye socket. The true smile also called the duchenne smile, named after the famous scientist who first separated the “mouth corners”-only smile, from the “eye socket” one.
Our brain can very easily distinguish between what is real and what is fake. In fact, researcher Dr. Niedenthal argues that there are three ways we can do so: (i) Our brain compares the geometry of a person’s face to a standard smile; (ii) We think about the situation and judge whether a smile is expected; and (iii) Most importantly, we automatically mimic the smile, to feel ourselves whether it is fake or real. If it is real, our brain will activate the same areas from the smiler and we can identify it as a real one.
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