“love is what moves the world, I’ve always thought…it is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down…bring them low…and make them crawl…”― Stephen King
Yes, love does move the world, but it starts with a smile…
Most likely, the Mona Lisa is the most famous smile, although my favorite one would have to be Johnny Depp’s smile while playing Captain Jack Sparrow!
A smile is a facial gesture with so much communicative value. According to psychologist Paul Ekman who famous for studying emotions and facial expressions, there are 18 types of smiles that come from combining different muscles of our face. Ekman tells us that the smile is the only gesture that universally means the same for all humans and it’s used to express the same emotion. He showed this by analyzing different cultures and particularly isolated tribes in New Guinea who had never been in contact with the Western world and they also smiled for a similar reason to the rest of the population.
Smile: joy, well being, pleasure, gratitude, happiness…
Did you know that even babies in a mother’s womb have a smiling reflex? Although babies start “smiling” at around 6 weeks old, Professor Campbell has been capturing images of unborn babies using 4-D scanners, “What’s behind the smile, of course, I can’t say, but the corners turn up and the cheeks bulge … I think it must be some indication of contentment in a stress-free environment”. Blind babies are also prone to smile when they hear voices of other people, this makes us believe that smiling is an innate ability we possess.
There are several psychological and social benefits of smiling, but there is a catch: we obtain most of these benefits when our smile is genuine:
The Duchenne smile is the most accurate representation of happiness. This is no ordinary fake smile, when we use this smile we raise our cheeks, the tips of our mouth are elevated, and we show wrinkles in the side of our eyes (Now you officially know how to detect a fake smile, we might have a problem with the Botox here though…)
1. It makes you happier, literally!
When we smile our brain releases endorphins (substances of the Central Nervous System that stimulate areas in our brain responsible for pleasure) there is a two way communication between your body and your brain, when something makes you happy your brain gives the necessary information to your face to smile, but we can also communicate in the opposite way with our brain, if you smile even though you might not feel like it, your brain will still receive the same information, therefore making you feel better. Try this and you will see how you start feeling more positive and cheerful every day!
The concept of facial feedback was already explained by Charles Darwin. Our facial expressions have a big impact on our emotional state: when I feel good I smile and when I smile I feel good!
Even the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it in our minds” ― Charles Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals)
2. The signal we send to others
Smiling doesn’t only make US happy, it also makes OTHERS happy. Have you noticed when someone smiles at you, you usually smile back, it is contagious! Why? Because of mirror neurons and reciprocity, you return it without even realizing. When you smile you feel good, and when others see you smiling, they smile too, and when they smile they also feel good.
3. Smiling makes you more likable
We are more likely to trust people who smile. Smiling makes us appear more social, friendlier, people who do not smile tend to look more intimidating. A smile attracts, which will higher your chances of achieving your goals.
4. Smiling helps us find solutions
When we are under stress, we have a reduction in our peripheral vision, we have “tunnel vision”, we focus only on what we have in front. This happens visually and cognitively so we stop considering other ideas that are not in front of our face.
Psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman from the University of Kansas studied the benefits of smiling during stressful episodes. Smiling helps reduce the intensity of the stress-related hormone levels in our body which in turn increases our ability to find different solutions to a problem.
According to Pressman, “The next time you are stuck in traffic or are experiencing some other type of stress,” “you might try to hold your face in a smile for a moment. Not only will it help you ‘grin and bear it’ psychologically, but it might actually help your heart health as well!”
5. Smiling to seduce
We, women, are aware of this right? But there’s research behind this! A researched published in the Journal Social Behavior and Personality analyzed the effect a woman’s smile on a man. In the research, when a woman only established eye contact she was approached by the man 20% of the time, but when a woman smiled, here it goes ladies: it increased to 60% of the time! My thought is that a smile will make a woman look more approachable, so men feel more comfortable when approaching her.
Let me answer the question you’re probably thinking, does this happen the other way around?!
No, sorry guys… Apparently, the smile increased the attractiveness of the women only, but it did not cause the same effect when a man smiled at a woman.
What did a woman find attractive according to this study? When a man appeared proud and even a little embarrassed. My suggestion to all the men out there: don’t stop smiling, just don’t overdo it, a little smile and eye contact usually works very well!
6. Smiling improves health
Smiling releases natural analgesics that our body produces like endorphins and serotonin. Also, as I said before, smiling reduces the productions of stress-inducing hormones in our bodies like adrenaline and cortisol. Smiling also reduces blood pressure. In other words, when you smile, your own body makes you feel better.
Not only smiling makes us feel better, but seeing someone smile can have an amazing effect on us. A research conducted in the UK used electromagnetic brain scan machines and heart-rate monitors to measure brain and heart activity on 109 volunteers, they found that seeing a smile can give more pleasure than having sex, eating chocolate or going shopping in that order. According to their clinical tests, when we see someone smile at us we generate a similar amount of stimulation in our brain than the stimulation we received if we ate 2,000 chocolate bars or won a bunch of money!
An interesting finding was that the amount of stimulation greatly depended on who was smiling at us, so if a baby or a famous person smiled at us we would get a high level of stimulation followed by a family member of a friend, and a lower level if it was a politician.
So, smile at people, especially if someone is having a bad day, you will make them feel better!
7. Smiling and success
In a research done by scientists from the University of California, yearbook pictures of girls were analyzed over time. After 30 years they contacted the same girls again to determine their happiness level and level of marital satisfaction. Turns out there was a correlation between women who showed a Duchenne smile in the yearbook picture and their level of satisfaction later in their life, and there was also a correlation between girls who did not smile or smiled very little and a higher percentage of divorce. This research is very powerful because it tells us that people who tend to genuinely smile not only have positive external outcomes, but they also have internal outcomes in the way they live.
Happiness = smiling
Smiling = happiness
8. Smiling and culture
Interestingly, there are cultural differences when we talk about smiling. This is very important to know because culture plays a big role in how we behave. The way we see certain behaviors here in the United States might not be viewed the same in another culture. According to research on countries who display positive emotions, countries in Latin America top the list as the ones who display the most positive emotions while countries such as Sudan, Tunisia, Serbia and Turkey display the least (This is highly related to their traumatic experiences with war and overall political and economic situation).
In a study published in 2007, researchers found that there are differences in the way people perceive smiles in The United States versus Japan. While we locate smiles in the mouth area, Japanese tend to look at a different area of the face to portray emotions. In a culture where emotions tend to be repressed, the area of the eyes is where feelings are usually displayed.
Remember, every culture has different ways of expressing themselves, it is important to recognize, acknowledge and respect them. We must teach future generations that there is immense richness and beauty in diversity.
Smiling is so important, that since 1999 we celebrate the World Smile Day on the first Friday of every October and for several years the World Happiness Report has made rankings to measure levels of happiness, this year Finland takes the first place!
Never underestimate the power of a smile! and remember to make it big and genuine!
“A warm smile is the universal language of kindness” -William Arthur Ward
