For many uf us (including myself), smiling is a shortcut to happiness. Where there’s a smile, there’s joy, right? Well, psychology is telling us today that this might not be the final true.
A recent study was published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and it suggest that the effect a smile can produce depends on what provokes it. If the smile is the result of an authentic emotion, yes, it can lift your mood, but if that smile is fake, that forcing can do the opposite.
Anirban Mukhopadhyay from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology raises a big question: can smiling always make you feel better, or only if you’re already feeling happy?
Many people smile when their happy, but some people also smile to hide some discomfort or just because is socially correct. That difference change the impact and how the body perceive it. Mukhopadhyay explains it this way: “most commonly, people smile when they are happy, because smiling reflects happiness. However, people also smile when they are unhappy, to mask negative emotion or to try and become happy.”
This study shows that if you smile because something make you happy, then that smile will make you feel even better. But if you’re not that use to smile, then force it can make an even bigger deal of the difference between what you feel and what you’re thinking.
Not one, but three experiments
To get a proper answer the researchers did 3 experiments with more than 250 participants.
In the first one, 108 participants talked about how many times they’ve smiled during the day and the beliefs they had over smiling in general. Then the filled a survey about satisfaction in life. The idea here was to link frequency with beliefs and a global evaluation of life.
The next experiment had 63 persons in it. They were given funny images under the false pretext this needed to be approved for future tests, and they were ask to only smile if the images were truly funny for them. But the real objective was to see the spontaneous reactions. This help the experts separate the fake smile to the real one.
The last experiment took 85 participants. They first had to remember something that made then smile for real in the past, then, they did facial exercises, like miming a smile or a neutral face. To finish it they hat to do they life satisfaction survey too. Here the team could evaluate the smiles, and the reasons behind them, comparing to the mood they had before.
What did they find?
The results were clear:
Those who don’t smile often actually felt worse after smiling too much. Why? The frequency reminded them that they were not actually feeling good. But those that smile naturally when they feel happy, felt even better.
What this mean is simple: If you’re always smiling, keep doing it because it will be beneficial for you. That’s what Mukhopadhyay recommends. But forcing a smile is a no no! This will just highlight a discomfort the emotion is not following the gesture.
Smiling differently
In Mukhopadhyay words, “People can think about their own beliefs about smiling, see how they feel about how frequently they smile and adapt either their beliefs or their behaviors to make themselves feel better.” It’s a way of checking ourself and what smiling means to us.
Am I smiling because I’m enjoying this? Is it a response only to fit in socially? There’s no right or wrong answers, but answering will hep you understand what effect it’s producing in you.
Maybe “just keep smiling” is not always the better option. It’s not about stop smiling either but about finding that connection between the emotions and the gesture.