Does smiling makes us Happy? Well that makes sense, in general if we're smiling we must be responding to something positive, right, unless of course were smiling for the camera, or smiling when a passerby says hi, when we answer the phone, to a co worker, and so on and so forth, so do those "fake" smiles trigger a happiness button, some researchers would say yes!
In 1989, a psychologist named Robert Zajonc published one of the most significant studies on the emotional effect of producing a smile.
His subjects repeated vowel sounds that forced their faces into various expressions. To mimic some of the characteristics of a smile, they made the long "e" sound, which stretches the corners of the mouth outward. Other vowel sounds were also tested, including the long "u," which forces the mouth into a pouty expression.
Subjects reported feeling good after making the long "e" sound, and feeling bad after the long "u."
Other studies reported similar results. One had subjects make the positive and negative expressions by holding a pen in their mouths, either protruding outward for a pout or held lengthwise in the teeth to make a smile. In another, researchers had subjects mimic each physiological trait of a smile until their faces were in a full Duchenne expression.
Charles Darwin first posed the idea that emotional responses influence our feelings in 1872. “The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it,” he wrote. The esteemed 19th-century psychologist William James went so far as to assert that if a person does not express an emotion, he has not felt it at all. Although few scientists would agree with such a statement today, there is evidence that emotions involve more than just the brain. The face, in particular, appears to play a big role.
We smile because we are happy, and we frown because we are sad. But does the causal arrow ( cause and effect) point in the other direction, too? A bunch of recent studies of Botox recipients suggests that our emotions are reinforced—perhaps even driven—by their corresponding facial expressions, hmm so how does freezing expressions with Botox injections work into these studies I'm wondering?
This past February psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people whose ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic botox injections are happier, on average, than people who can frown, is this good news? The researchers administered an anxiety and depression questionnaire to 25 females, half of whom had received frown-inhibiting botox injections. The botox recipients reported feeling happier and less anxious in general; more important, they did not report feeling any more attractive, which suggests that the emotional effects were not driven by a psychological boost that could come from the treatment’s cosmetic nature.
“It would appear that the way we feel emotions isn’t just restricted to our brain—there are parts of our bodies that help and reinforce the feelings we’re having,” says Michael Lewis, a co-author of the study. “It’s like a feedback loop.” In a related study from March, scientists at the Technical University of Munich in Germany scanned botox recipients with MRI machines while asking them to mimic angry faces. They found that the botox subjects had much lower activity in the brain circuits involved in emotional processing and responses—in the amygdala, hypothalamus and parts of the brain stem—as compared with controls who had not received treatment.
The concept works the opposite way, too—enhancing emotions rather than suppressing them. People who frown during an unpleasant procedure report feeling more pain than those who do not, according to a study published in May 2008 in the Journal of Pain. Researchers applied heat to the forearms of 29 participants, who were asked to either make unhappy, neutral or relaxed faces during the procedure. Those who exhibited negative expressions reported being in more pain than the other two groups. Lewis, who was not involved in that study, says he plans to study the effect that botox injections have on pain perception. “It’s possible that people may feel less pain if they’re unable to express it,” he says.
I've always believed in the power of a smile to make me feel better and make someone else feel better, I've done my own research in our jewelry store in Miami (www.turchinjewelry.com) when an unusually grumpy person comes in I've gone out of my way to smile consistently at them as hard as it might be and at times it's been a real challenge, but I have seen very negative people turn around in from of my face, it astounds me every time!! So let all try and smile more maybe if we play this forward we'll be a world of smiling faces, even peace could be possible!
