Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome stuff to bow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Degrass. Julie
Speaker 1: a smiley person. Would you would you say that you
Speaker 1: are smile prone? M. I don't think of myself that's
Speaker 1: just a smily person. In fact, you and I were
Speaker 1: talking about smiling a little earlier, and I typically have
Speaker 1: sort of a frowny face even though I'm not frowning.
Speaker 1: You just have turned down lips. So I guess others
Speaker 1: think of me as a frowny face. What about you? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm guess I'm not opposed to smiling. I'm not a
Speaker 1: smile I do smile. UM, but I feel like my
Speaker 1: relationship with smiles is kind of weird, Like, on one,
Speaker 1: on one hand, there's there's always this I feel like
Speaker 1: there's this temptation in especially the United States, UH, bombarded
Speaker 1: as we are with perfect smiles in our TV actors
Speaker 1: and especially in our big Hollywood actors and in all
Speaker 1: of our advertisements, that you tend to be a little
Speaker 1: more self conscious about your teeth. Uh if you don't
Speaker 1: have that perfect grin which can can often make you
Speaker 1: a little more tight lipped in your smiling and a
Speaker 1: little more reserved in your flashing of your smile, which
Speaker 1: is something to take take with us. Take that idea
Speaker 1: with us as we we go into this this topic today,
Speaker 1: because I was recently reading in an interview excerpt with
Speaker 1: Ricky Gervei and he was talking, he was getting into
Speaker 1: the whole teeth and of course it's the old trope
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, British teeth versus American teeth, and
Speaker 1: and and what he was finding and what I've found
Speaker 1: before too, is that in the US again, there's that
Speaker 1: huge emphasis on the perfect smile, and in Brittain things
Speaker 1: are a little more relaxed and normal. You can watch
Speaker 1: a TV show there and you'll see people with teeth
Speaker 1: that are refreshingly normal teeth. You'll see like a gap
Speaker 1: in somebody's teeth, and you'll you'll it'll at first it's
Speaker 1: an American view where you're like, oh, well that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Then you feel a little more uh related to the
Speaker 1: character because this person seems a little more real. Um.
Speaker 1: So take all of that with you into into this
Speaker 1: topic as we discuss smiles. The science of smiles, What
Speaker 1: smiles are really doing, because, as is often pointed out,
Speaker 1: a smile is not just this thing floating in the air.
Speaker 1: It's not like the cheshire cat. It's something that's attached
Speaker 1: to our body. It's it's right up here on our face.
Speaker 1: And our faith is the communications array for the organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the smile. There's so much more to the smile
Speaker 1: than you would think. So we're going to dive into that. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a statistic that is thrown around a lot
Speaker 1: that kids smile four hundred times a day and US
Speaker 1: adults on average smile only twenty times a day. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense because I feel like with children,
Speaker 1: especially the very young children, it's all just a pendulum
Speaker 1: between you know, absolute care and unhappiness and just just
Speaker 1: and then just unbridled happiness on the other end. So
Speaker 1: you know, they're swinging into the pendle, and they're also
Speaker 1: crying more d in the course of the day. They're
Speaker 1: also feeling heartbroken more during the course of the day.
Speaker 1: And humans have a lot more um humans adults. I
Speaker 1: keep making that mistake in conversations. Uh, Us, adult humans
Speaker 1: have a lot more nuance in the way that we
Speaker 1: react emotionally. To the world. Well, a lot of it
Speaker 1: too is mimicking your environment and learning these social cues.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk more about this in terms of mirror
Speaker 1: neurons in a second, but I did want to point
Speaker 1: out that babies actually smile in the womb, and previous
Speaker 1: to four D scanners, which produced three D images that
Speaker 1: move in real time, it was thought that babies smiled
Speaker 1: only after learning the behavior about six weeks after they
Speaker 1: were born. But it was Dr Stewart Campbell who was
Speaker 1: the first to capture these images of baby smiling in
Speaker 1: the womb, and his idea for this lag of after
Speaker 1: they're born, this six week lag of smiling, is that
Speaker 1: in the womb, it's safe, it's warm, so you're able
Speaker 1: to leisurely float about without a worry and perhaps smile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course you'd smile on that right, right, Sure, But
Speaker 1: he's saying that once you're born, you know, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're just bombarded with all the stimuli, and
Speaker 1: so that's a smile and relaxation is sort of the
Speaker 1: furthest things from a child or baby's mind at that point.
Speaker 1: And that made me think about when we've talked about
Speaker 1: children's brains in particular babies being soaked in neurotransmitters which
Speaker 1: are faring around all the data that they're taking in.
Speaker 1: And that makes sense to me, you know, because that
Speaker 1: first six weeks it's just trying to make sense of
Speaker 1: all these different sensations. So smile is going to have
Speaker 1: to wait, you know. On the subject of smiles, also
Speaker 1: found some stats about the world smiles UH, and that
Speaker 1: this particular starters looking at found that countries in East
Speaker 1: Asia Japan and Southeast Asia Thailand, of the Philippines, this
Speaker 1: is where you would find the most smiles per capita
Speaker 1: um and then UH, where as if you looked at
Speaker 1: Northern European countries, Scandinavian countries, in the Eastern Bloc countries,
Speaker 1: you would see considerably a less, not like the least
Speaker 1: smiles per capita in those areas. That's interesting because I
Speaker 1: was recently at a with a party for a kid
Speaker 1: and there was a large contingent of German parents there,
Speaker 1: and I noticed that in the conversations that I had
Speaker 1: with the parents that um, you know, you begin to
Speaker 1: notice your own behavior in this group situation, that I
Speaker 1: was doing the smiling head nodding thing a lot more
Speaker 1: than the German parents were, because I think that for
Speaker 1: me socialized in America, that's a cue for I'm listening
Speaker 1: to you, I'm agreeing, I'm encouraging you. Yes, yeah, that
Speaker 1: little voice that comes on your head, it says all right,
Speaker 1: grinn and not grinn and not. They just convey that
Speaker 1: you you were listening and you were in some on
Speaker 1: some level agreeing with what they're saying, even if you
Speaker 1: are just completely tuning up. Okay, so when I'm grinning
Speaker 1: and nodding, let's take a closer look at what is
Speaker 1: actually going on. Is it sort of like a smile
Speaker 1: one oh one when it comes to our brains and
Speaker 1: our muscles. So if you see something that pleases you,
Speaker 1: you have these neuronal signals that travel from the cortex
Speaker 1: of your brain to the brain stem. Now, the brain
Speaker 1: stom is the most primitive part of our brain. Right
Speaker 1: from there, the cranial muscles carry the signal further towards
Speaker 1: the smiling muscles in your face, in particular something called
Speaker 1: the zygo madocus major muscles, and that draws up the
Speaker 1: corners of your mouth. So once they contract, a positive
Speaker 1: feedback loop goes back to the brain and reinforces this
Speaker 1: feeling of joy or pleasure or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: has made you smile. Now we have a lot more
Speaker 1: insight into a true blue smile. This is the crinkling
Speaker 1: of the eyes kind of smile. Because of someone named
Speaker 1: m A. Bungamin Douchen is called the douch smile. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you tackled Sin's name because I was puzzling over
Speaker 1: that one. I slaughtered his his first name, for sure,
Speaker 1: but Dushan, I think, you know, not too bad. But
Speaker 1: he did experiments where he would actually zap single muscles
Speaker 1: all over the face with electrodes to try to figure
Speaker 1: out all these different expressions and emotions that we show.
Speaker 1: And that's how he came to figure out that there's
Speaker 1: a true blue smile that you see. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the sixty different expressions that he u electrocuted into place
Speaker 1: and then photographed. And actually, if you go to stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com, uh, you will see
Speaker 1: that we have uploaded a gallery if some of these images,
Speaker 1: not all sixty because I think that would just be
Speaker 1: a bit much, but some of these images so you
Speaker 1: can see what we're talking about, because they're brilliant. There's
Speaker 1: this one older gentleman that is the test subject in
Speaker 1: most of these photos, and it's uh at once hilarious
Speaker 1: and horrifying to see his face contorted the electricity into
Speaker 1: these different emotional states because his hair is all kind
Speaker 1: of mussed up anyway, so you know, he's got this
Speaker 1: terrifying smile spreading over his face, and his hair just
Speaker 1: kind of looks like it's a bit on end uh
Speaker 1: and then you you know, you see the electrodes. Uh. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting stuff. But that's how to Shan figured
Speaker 1: out what this smile, this true blue smile was, because
Speaker 1: again it's the zygomatic major muscle that's turning up the lips.
Speaker 1: But also you have this orbicularious oculi muscle and that
Speaker 1: raises the cheeks informs those cross feet around the eyes.
Speaker 1: I think everybody kind of knows what that looks like,
Speaker 1: right you have an idea in your head right now.
Speaker 1: I always think about my grandmother, you know, and her
Speaker 1: very sweet and joyous smiles and what that looks like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the the eventual smile lines that you hear
Speaker 1: about in people's faces. Yeah, they say, oh, don't don't
Speaker 1: laugh too much, because then you'll have smile lines when
Speaker 1: you get older. So there's this idea that you see
Speaker 1: something it pleases you. But there's also the idea that
Speaker 1: you're talking to someone, they're smiling at you, and what
Speaker 1: do you do? You smile back? Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like I encountered that version of smiling more than
Speaker 1: like spontaneous by myself smiling. Because if I'm by myself
Speaker 1: and I'm reading something that I'm enjoying, I mean, occasionally
Speaker 1: i may laugh out loud, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm probably not smiling. I'm thinking maybe I should,
Speaker 1: I should experiment on myself with a camera or something.
Speaker 1: But and smiling really creepily you're right now, just to
Speaker 1: see you feel smile, that's kind of creepy smile. That
Speaker 1: seems like now it's a creepy smile. Well, the thing,
Speaker 1: this is what I think is interesting about when you
Speaker 1: smile at a person who's smiling back at you. It's
Speaker 1: because those neurons that fire both when we observe and
Speaker 1: when we take parton in action, those are called mirror neurons.
Speaker 1: So when we smile, mirror neurons simulate our own smiling.
Speaker 1: So on one level, you can't not smile. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's an innate in state to imitate each other. We
Speaker 1: see that smile, and then the smile forms in our
Speaker 1: own face. Uh. It's uh, you know, ties into a
Speaker 1: synchronicity of our body, our actions, even when we speak
Speaker 1: to each other. Um, you know, like the whole the
Speaker 1: old idea that you know you're you're someone who's grown
Speaker 1: up in the South and you don't really talk with
Speaker 1: the Southern accident until you're pulled over by a Southern cop,
Speaker 1: and then your boice becomes a little Suddenly there are
Speaker 1: all these Southern inflections that you thought you had abandoned
Speaker 1: or outgrown. Um. I find myself doing that a lot.
Speaker 1: Not not being pulled over by Southern cops all the time,
Speaker 1: but I'll be I'll be talking to somebody and I'll
Speaker 1: fall into some of their speech patterns, and and then
Speaker 1: I'll start freaking out, thinking, oh my goodness, they think
Speaker 1: some sort of a complete nut who's only able to
Speaker 1: communicate with people by mimicking the person he's communicating with. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's just showing that you're getting the person
Speaker 1: you're trying to connect with them. Yeah, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's what the research here shows is that I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: It shows that this is part of our normal interactions
Speaker 1: with people, that when we engage with someone in conversation,
Speaker 1: we make eye contact and we have to go and
Speaker 1: sync with each other. It's kind of a almost kind
Speaker 1: of a Star Trek mind meld that's happening, except in
Speaker 1: a very real sense. That's that's more amazing than any fantasy. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it points back to you, this exquisite external
Speaker 1: stimuli machine that we have within us. And Charles Darwin
Speaker 1: he actually said, you know, I mean, besides you know,
Speaker 1: being known for evolution in biology, he was actually one
Speaker 1: of the early experimental psychologists. And he thought, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe these facial expressions don't come from within. Maybe they
Speaker 1: are external to us. So it's not just us broadcasting
Speaker 1: our mental state of mind. And he thought, maybe these
Speaker 1: expressions can determine your mental state. So this is something
Speaker 1: we now know as facial feedback hypothesis. And he wrote
Speaker 1: the nineteen or excuse me, the eighteen seventy two book
Speaker 1: The Expression of Emotions and Man and Animals, which came
Speaker 1: to that conclusion that the universality of facial expressions owed
Speaker 1: to the evolutionary origin of it. So this all turns
Speaker 1: out to be pretty spot on, and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of studies that support that. And one of probably
Speaker 1: the most well known studies, there's several variations on this,
Speaker 1: is a study of pencils stuck in the mouth, in
Speaker 1: which the person has to then evaluate fake smiles versus
Speaker 1: real smiles. Yes, and I challenge anyone who's listening and
Speaker 1: not driving a car or doing anything remotely dangerous, uh,
Speaker 1: that has a pencil around a clean pencil. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: if that pencil has germs on it, that's your your
Speaker 1: own business. But if you put that pencil and hold
Speaker 1: it between your teeth, try to smile, and you will
Speaker 1: find that you're smiling abilities are somewhat hindered actually too.
Speaker 1: And if you take that that pencil and you put
Speaker 1: it uh in a vertical position so that it's just
Speaker 1: under your lip, that will actually form a frown, which
Speaker 1: you know, again that's a different pencil studying. Many variations
Speaker 1: on this, but the one I'm thinking about was conducted
Speaker 1: by social psychologist Pold Nightenthal and it was a mimicking study. Again,
Speaker 1: it was this idea that Darwin was saying, Hey, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily internal. It can come externally. And so she
Speaker 1: had one group of participants asked to look at these
Speaker 1: photos of people smiling and determine whether or not it
Speaker 1: was real or fake and hold that pencil in their mouth,
Speaker 1: and then the other group was asked to identify real
Speaker 1: and fake smiles, but they didn't have the pencil in
Speaker 1: their mouth. Well, okay, of course, it turned out that
Speaker 1: the people who had the pencil in their mouth had
Speaker 1: a harder time identifying the true blue smiles because that
Speaker 1: whole mechanism of their rare neurons and their ability to
Speaker 1: mimic that smile was interrupted. So the ability to mimic
Speaker 1: the smile influences our power to understand them and our
Speaker 1: power to feel that emotion. So they didn't get the
Speaker 1: emotional lift that their counterparts, who were not hindered and
Speaker 1: could identify a real smile got when they looked at
Speaker 1: that true blue smile. It's another uh, all this information
Speaker 1: is just another great argument for that mind body connection
Speaker 1: that we've talked about again again. They had the idea
Speaker 1: that we're not this brain that's sealed up in this
Speaker 1: body suit. We are and we're not this rider on
Speaker 1: this horse where a centaur where this uh, this can
Speaker 1: joint being of brain and body and uh and to
Speaker 1: the you know the quote that I mentioned earlier, which
Speaker 1: actually came from Paula Needenthal, were not these uh these
Speaker 1: magic chess our cat grins who are just floating in
Speaker 1: the middle of space. That that grin is attached to
Speaker 1: our body. That's a part of our body, and it's
Speaker 1: it's part of this facial communication system that we have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's telling your brain something about the world and how
Speaker 1: you should feel. All right, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we get back, when you're talking about smiles, happiness,
Speaker 1: life expectancy, and chopsticks. All right, we are back. Does
Speaker 1: flashing a grin make you happier? It's the question, and
Speaker 1: could you live longer? Yes, because that's the big question
Speaker 1: that sort of arises out of what we've discussed so far. Um,
Speaker 1: we've talked about the way that it is the smiles
Speaker 1: are as part of our communications array. It's a part
Speaker 1: of our means of communing with other individuals who were
Speaker 1: talking to about sharing things that are smile worthy. So
Speaker 1: to what extent does it have a positive impact on
Speaker 1: longevity and just sort of mental health? In general, especially
Speaker 1: when you consider that smiling um in studies has shown
Speaker 1: to reduce courses all levels of stress hormone levels and
Speaker 1: increase endorphins that feel good hormone HW. Can you study
Speaker 1: this right? Well? One way, of course is to look
Speaker 1: at older pick ars of somebody, particularly pictures in say
Speaker 1: a yearbook or baseball card photos. Both of these factor
Speaker 1: into a couple of different studies that we're about to discuss.
Speaker 1: As far as the yearbook goes, researchers at De Paul
Speaker 1: University in Greencastle, Indiana analyzed the college yearbook photos of
Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty five alumni and ranked the smiles
Speaker 1: and those photographs in the scale of two which is
Speaker 1: your complete gloomy, gus angsty teenager smile to a full tin,
Speaker 1: which is your complete electrodes attached to the face, grim
Speaker 1: beaming from ear to ear smile. And the participants in
Speaker 1: these studies were also asked a series of questions about
Speaker 1: their relationships, that status, their divorce history, and UH, and
Speaker 1: the non smilers were actually more likely, it turned out
Speaker 1: to be divorced, and the people who smiled at the most.
Speaker 1: Now then they also did some follow up on this
Speaker 1: right UH, they performed a second round of smile rankings,
Speaker 1: this time recruiting sixty one adults fifty five years older
Speaker 1: who are willing to hand over a handful of photographs
Speaker 1: from when they were ages five to twenty two, and
Speaker 1: once again, the people who smiled the most in their
Speaker 1: photographs were least likely to be divorced. Okay and the
Speaker 1: University of California, Berkeley, they also studied as a thirty
Speaker 1: year longitudinal study of yearbook photos of women who had
Speaker 1: the best, you know, truest smiles, and they found the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing that after a thirty year study
Speaker 1: of those people who had those true blue smiles, that
Speaker 1: women who smiled the most and those photos had the
Speaker 1: happier lives, happier marriages, and fewer setbacks, which leads me
Speaker 1: to the baseball cards study, which is very similar. This
Speaker 1: is a Wayne State University research project examining the baseball
Speaker 1: card photos of major league players in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: and players who didn't smile in their pictures lived an
Speaker 1: average of only seventy two point nine years, while players
Speaker 1: with beaming smiles they lived in average of seventy nine
Speaker 1: point nine years. So with this data suggests is that
Speaker 1: smiling increased life expectancy. Now, some people will look at
Speaker 1: these studies and say, okay, yeah, but in terms of
Speaker 1: cultural responses to smiling, men are sometimes not encouraged smile.
Speaker 1: So perhaps that person was happy, but they just didn't smile.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps the person smiling was thinking about something that
Speaker 1: really sort of made them feel warm and fuzzing on
Speaker 1: the inside. Maybe they were thinking about their children, and
Speaker 1: so at that very moment they got a picture of
Speaker 1: what that person's frame of mind was, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily true for how they conducted the rest of their lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's plenty of room to pick this apart,
Speaker 1: you know, Stanley, there because there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were significantly happier after they got out of
Speaker 1: high school. For instance, there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who for whom everything after high school was just a
Speaker 1: backward gaze to the brilliance that was their senior year.
Speaker 1: I mean, and then when you start to your point,
Speaker 1: when you start looking about the differences internationally and culturally, um,
Speaker 1: you know, how would the study have looked if it
Speaker 1: had it been conducted in Thailand? How would it look
Speaker 1: had it been conducted in Scandinavian country. So one say
Speaker 1: that that's far harder to pick apart. Has to do
Speaker 1: with stress and chopsticks. Yes, Now, unlike the pencil scenario
Speaker 1: where you stick a pencil in your mouth and suddenly
Speaker 1: you're you're inhibited from smiling, you can, of course take
Speaker 1: two chopsticks and you can force a smile. Um, I've
Speaker 1: never done that. Was this a thing? Is this like
Speaker 1: a horsing around with chopsticks kind of gag? Or is
Speaker 1: this just something that thought up of the experiment. I
Speaker 1: think it was just for the experiment because what they
Speaker 1: could do with these chopsticks is they could manipulate more muscles.
Speaker 1: We were talking about hundred sixty nine participants who muscles
Speaker 1: were manipulated with chopsticks into a neutral expression, a standard
Speaker 1: smile or a doc in smile. Because that way they
Speaker 1: could test all these different stress reactions against those mimicking
Speaker 1: neuronal signals that were going up to the brain. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in addition to the chopstick placement, some were explicitly instructed
Speaker 1: to smile. Then, of course this is where the stress
Speaker 1: comes in. They were subjected to a series of stress
Speaker 1: inducing multitasking activities which they struggle to perform, of course,
Speaker 1: because they have chopsticks in their face while continuing to
Speaker 1: hold the chopsticks um, and the subjects heart rates and
Speaker 1: self reported stress levels were monitored throughout, So those who
Speaker 1: were instructed to smile recovered from these stressful activities with
Speaker 1: lower heart rates than those who held neutral expressions, and
Speaker 1: those with duchene smiles were the most relaxed of all,
Speaker 1: with the most positive effects. And those with four smiles
Speaker 1: held only by the chopsticks also reported more positive feelings
Speaker 1: than those who didn't smile at all. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: the big story here is that um neutral expressions, they
Speaker 1: have more stress or that they seem to uh not
Speaker 1: be able to weather this multitasking with the lower heart rates, right,
Speaker 1: But those with that true blue smile, that duchene smile,
Speaker 1: they have sailed away on this and even the fake
Speaker 1: smiles actually had a positive influence. And that's really telling
Speaker 1: as well and interesting because you tend to think of
Speaker 1: the fake smile like when you encounter like that genuine
Speaker 1: fake smile on somebody's face, uh, you you often think you're, like,
Speaker 1: what kind of monster is on the other side of it?
Speaker 1: What kind of just complete emotional blank slate, am I
Speaker 1: actually having a conversation with And in reality, here's this
Speaker 1: person who's I mean, they're wearing the mask, but the
Speaker 1: mask is wearing them, you know, I know. It's just
Speaker 1: thinking about two examples of that. One is the beauty
Speaker 1: queen smile, which can be a terrifying smile also because
Speaker 1: you know, there's a large amount of drag, makeup and
Speaker 1: gender performance going on. And the second thing is the
Speaker 1: mayor from the Nightmare before Christmas? Do you remember this?
Speaker 1: He had a frown and he had a smile, and
Speaker 1: so it would revolve around depending on you know, who
Speaker 1: he was constituent he was talking to. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: even that terrifying fake smile is going to give you
Speaker 1: a little bit of a lift. And here is yet
Speaker 1: another study about smiling, and this one has to do
Speaker 1: with pain. Um. It turns out at people who frowned
Speaker 1: during an unpleasant procedure, they report feeling more pain than
Speaker 1: those who do not. This is a study that was
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Pain. And what happened is
Speaker 1: that the researchers applied heat to the forums of twenty
Speaker 1: nine participants who were asked to either make unhappy, neutral,
Speaker 1: or relax faces during the procedure, and lo and behold.
Speaker 1: Those who exhibited negative expressions reported being in more pain
Speaker 1: than the others. That reminds me of one of the
Speaker 1: yoga classes I used to go to, back when I
Speaker 1: got to go to yoga. Would always wait until we
Speaker 1: were in some sort of complicated balancing scenario and uh,
Speaker 1: and we're all standing out there, no doubt what kind
Speaker 1: of strange faces going on, and she would encourage everyone
Speaker 1: to smile, Like if you just said, if you're if
Speaker 1: you can't smile, you're you're working too hard at it.
Speaker 1: And so you you'd force a smile while you know,
Speaker 1: wrapped in eagle pose or something, and and it would
Speaker 1: have this I feel like it would have the strengthening
Speaker 1: effect at least on me, Like I'm suddenly I'm smiling,
Speaker 1: and I can actually make it through the pose a
Speaker 1: little longer than I'm just setting there kind of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, grimly trying to to force myself into this position. Right,
Speaker 1: It had a calming effect. And so that's what we
Speaker 1: see over and over again in these studies. Grant Embarrett
Speaker 1: grant Embarrett Nights, which incidentally, was the title of that
Speaker 1: study we're just talking about with the chopsticks, Grin and Barrett,
Speaker 1: the influence of manipulated positive facial expression on the stress response.
Speaker 1: So we talked about the divide between adults and children
Speaker 1: as far as smiles goes. But but how about the
Speaker 1: gender divide. Well, if there are any women out there
Speaker 1: listening to this, and you've ever had someone tell you
Speaker 1: to smile, probably an older gentleman than you. Know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about here in terms of what is sometimes
Speaker 1: expected of women, that they're going to be friendly, that
Speaker 1: they're going to smile, And so you tend to think
Speaker 1: of women smiling more, and you often see studies that
Speaker 1: say that women do. But then you have someone named
Speaker 1: Marianne la France. She is a professor of psychology at Yale,
Speaker 1: and she says that wide cultural, ethnic, and other differences
Speaker 1: suggest that the sex difference is not something that is hardwired,
Speaker 1: so it's not a function of being male or female,
Speaker 1: but that there's a cultural overlay that sort of tells
Speaker 1: he tells us about these rules about smiling, and she did.
Speaker 1: She and co authors Elizabeth Pallack of Fale and Marvin
Speaker 1: Heck examined hundred and eighty six research reports about smiling
Speaker 1: and gender and came up with some very interesting information. First,
Speaker 1: they found that women do smile more than them but
Speaker 1: the difference is really modest. Yes. And she also found
Speaker 1: that when when occupying similar work and social status, the
Speaker 1: gender differences in the rate of smiling tends to disappear. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's working in the same pit or the same office,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna see you're not gonna see as much
Speaker 1: of this social contract and play that not in the
Speaker 1: same way that it would be outside of the workplace. Well,
Speaker 1: and in those instances of the playing field is leveled
Speaker 1: because they occupy the same position of power, So it's
Speaker 1: not necessary for women to put on that thick smile, yeah,
Speaker 1: to try to amelior every situation. Um. Another finding was
Speaker 1: that the rate at which men and women differ and
Speaker 1: how much they smile is greater in the United States
Speaker 1: and Canada than other parts of the world like England
Speaker 1: and Australia and the US. There's a greater sex difference
Speaker 1: among Caucasians in smiling, but this difference virtually disappears among
Speaker 1: African Americans, and in terms of age differences, teens show
Speaker 1: the largest sex difference in smiling. After that, the sexes
Speaker 1: converge on their smile. Right, So that's this idea that
Speaker 1: teens are really very preoccupied with gender roles at that
Speaker 1: point and performing those gender roles. So perhaps that's why
Speaker 1: that is the biggest difference that's seen. So the guys
Speaker 1: are given in more to this idea though you need
Speaker 1: to be a little more macho and not smile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm tough, I'm angsty, I'm very deep man, whereas the
Speaker 1: females are more feel more pressure to be that smiley,
Speaker 1: happy creature. Yeah. And another finding this was pretty fascinating,
Speaker 1: the largest sex differences in smiling a card when men
Speaker 1: and women thought they were being observed. So again that's
Speaker 1: this idea that, um, you know, if you're being observed,
Speaker 1: then you're going to fulfill whatever social role you think
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be playing. And you know, perhaps then
Speaker 1: that's when you see women smiling more, because that's what
Speaker 1: women do in in in the bigger social contract that
Speaker 1: we all are sort of signing on too. And as
Speaker 1: we talked about the teenager brain before and our we
Speaker 1: did a whole episode on that. Check that out in
Speaker 1: our archives we talked about just how far more important
Speaker 1: the social world is to the teenager because you have
Speaker 1: an organism that is has evolved to the point where
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be branching off and finding a new
Speaker 1: tribe to live in and fit in with, and therefore
Speaker 1: it's it's to the to the species side of us,
Speaker 1: it is it is literally life and death, even though
Speaker 1: social agent in high school it's not life and death.
Speaker 1: So um, so you can imagine how this, uh, the
Speaker 1: pressure to smile or not to smile would be even
Speaker 1: greater in in say high school lunch ron. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: especially if you thought that your smile might be rejected,
Speaker 1: because we talked about how that the pain was actually
Speaker 1: felt more in the teenage brain, and we've talked about
Speaker 1: how pain in terms of emotion and physical pain are
Speaker 1: both processed by the magdala. So um, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: see that. So I think what the spells out to
Speaker 1: everybody is you gotta smile. You don't have a choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you will smile, don't fight it. In fact, you really
Speaker 1: should probably be going in the opposite direction, trying to
Speaker 1: smile more faking it until you make it, but also
Speaker 1: just faking it in general. Um now on the on
Speaker 1: the subject of fake smiles, Mary le France we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier um I was reading a Wired dot com interview
Speaker 1: with her, and she pointed out that the problem is
Speaker 1: that in some situations were just too preoccupied with other
Speaker 1: details that we're just not going to notice. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, somebody smiling, they're talking at me, Fine,
Speaker 1: you just let it pass. But if you're actually able
Speaker 1: to focus in on that grin and it actually becomes
Speaker 1: the thing that you're you're thinking about and contemplating, then
Speaker 1: you can more often than not see through the fakeness. Well,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about micro expressions before, the split second
Speaker 1: expressions across the face, and so we we pick up
Speaker 1: on those, like you say, if you're really paying attention,
Speaker 1: if you're not distracted, so you could have a smile,
Speaker 1: but you could also have a WinCE in there. So
Speaker 1: it was really important for us to be able to
Speaker 1: pick up on those really subtle hints about what someone's feeling,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the way that we communicate is
Speaker 1: non verbal. So here's a question, should we all have
Speaker 1: permanent smiles inscribed on our faces? Because this has apparently
Speaker 1: been a trend to some degree in South Korea, with
Speaker 1: the individuals getting this, uh, this perma smile etched into
Speaker 1: their face kind of kind of a mild like little
Speaker 1: just in a little up turn out like a full
Speaker 1: on joker face. But that the idea of then you'll
Speaker 1: look happier all the time. And really, when you look
Speaker 1: at the science, it begins to make a certain sort
Speaker 1: of sense. Like if you'd ask me beforehand, hey, would
Speaker 1: you want to have a smile inscribed in your face?
Speaker 1: I would say no. And I would still say no,
Speaker 1: but I would at least now be able to say all.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it personally, but I can see what
Speaker 1: the benefits would be. I don't know. I think that
Speaker 1: it would be really confusing in seriously sad situations if
Speaker 1: someone was staring back at me with a little smile. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because to your point, the social contract, and sometimes the
Speaker 1: social contract is saying do not smile, do not at
Speaker 1: this very moment. Do the opposite of that, please, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you look at it that way, it would
Speaker 1: be a definite problem. You'd really have to be in
Speaker 1: the right occupation, like maybe newscaster, like not not like
Speaker 1: a full like twenty four our newscaster, but more like
Speaker 1: a local newscaster. I think like the good morning you know,
Speaker 1: like happy news person. Yeah where even even countering before,
Speaker 1: like they're even delivering kind of down news, but they
Speaker 1: still keep that smile on their face. They think it's
Speaker 1: a little it can be a little creepy because then
Speaker 1: we're back in the area. If you're using a smile
Speaker 1: when you really shouldn't be, and and it's really skewing
Speaker 1: the message you're trying to relate, we'll see that's the
Speaker 1: botox problem. Like there are some applications of botox that
Speaker 1: actually will inhibit the person to use the muscles to frown.
Speaker 1: And you know, by the way those people report being
Speaker 1: happier perhaps because they can't frown, but again, you can't
Speaker 1: take the social cue off of their face and really
Speaker 1: know what they're thinking or responding to. Right, And then
Speaker 1: it comes back to what we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: If if you were to whatever degree you were inhibited
Speaker 1: from smiling, you are that inhibit your ability to sync
Speaker 1: with someone else's smile to understand the emotions behind behind
Speaker 1: their facial situation. All right, So think about that the
Speaker 1: next time you engage in a smiling session. With your
Speaker 1: fellow human. Do you see the crinkler eyes or is
Speaker 1: it just the zygomatic major muscle plan let us know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us, you
Speaker 1: can find us in all the normal places. You want
Speaker 1: to see that smile gallery we're talking about. Head to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Bow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.
Speaker 1: That's where we put all the podcast episodes, and I
Speaker 1: mean all of them, not just the ones that are
Speaker 1: available on iTunes and wherever you go to get it.
Speaker 1: We have all of them on the site. You can
Speaker 1: also find our blog posts, you can find our videos,
Speaker 1: you can find links all of our social accounts, and
Speaker 1: you can just go to those social accounts out right.
Speaker 1: We are generally going at it on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: We're on Google Plus and hey, we also have that
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, Mind Stuff Show, And you can always craft
Speaker 1: an email and send it to Blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com