WEBVTT - The Science of Smiles 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:14.160 Works dot com. Hey you welcome stuff to bow your mind. 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:16.640 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Degrass. Julie 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.000 a smiley person. Would you would you say that you 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:22.680 are smile prone? M. I don't think of myself that's 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:24.160 just a smily person. In fact, you and I were 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:27.760 talking about smiling a little earlier, and I typically have 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:30.160 sort of a frowny face even though I'm not frowning. 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:34.479 You just have turned down lips. So I guess others 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:39.280 think of me as a frowny face. What about you? Um, 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.600 I'm guess I'm not opposed to smiling. I'm not a 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.440 smile I do smile. UM, but I feel like my 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.840 relationship with smiles is kind of weird, Like, on one, 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:52.720 on one hand, there's there's always this I feel like 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:57.880 there's this temptation in especially the United States, UH, bombarded 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:02.200 as we are with perfect smiles in our TV actors 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:04.280 and especially in our big Hollywood actors and in all 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.160 of our advertisements, that you tend to be a little 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.200 more self conscious about your teeth. Uh if you don't 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.000 have that perfect grin which can can often make you 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.040 a little more tight lipped in your smiling and a 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.280 little more reserved in your flashing of your smile, which 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:20.760 is something to take take with us. Take that idea 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:23.480 with us as we we go into this this topic today, 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:27.120 because I was recently reading in an interview excerpt with 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:30.720 Ricky Gervei and he was talking, he was getting into 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:32.560 the whole teeth and of course it's the old trope 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.760 of uh, you know, British teeth versus American teeth, and 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:38.880 and and what he was finding and what I've found 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:41.679 before too, is that in the US again, there's that 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.360 huge emphasis on the perfect smile, and in Brittain things 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.320 are a little more relaxed and normal. You can watch 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.000 a TV show there and you'll see people with teeth 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:53.480 that are refreshingly normal teeth. You'll see like a gap 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.280 in somebody's teeth, and you'll you'll it'll at first it's 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:58.960 an American view where you're like, oh, well that's interesting. 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.400 Then you feel a little more uh related to the 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:05.160 character because this person seems a little more real. Um. 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:07.200 So take all of that with you into into this 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:10.400 topic as we discuss smiles. The science of smiles, What 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.000 smiles are really doing, because, as is often pointed out, 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:15.359 a smile is not just this thing floating in the air. 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.800 It's not like the cheshire cat. It's something that's attached 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:20.920 to our body. It's it's right up here on our face. 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:25.320 And our faith is the communications array for the organism. Yeah, 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:26.920 and the smile. There's so much more to the smile 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.560 than you would think. So we're going to dive into that. Uh. 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:32.119 This is a statistic that is thrown around a lot 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:35.720 that kids smile four hundred times a day and US 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:40.560 adults on average smile only twenty times a day. Okay, 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:42.560 well that makes sense because I feel like with children, 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:45.240 especially the very young children, it's all just a pendulum 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:49.360 between you know, absolute care and unhappiness and just just 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:51.760 and then just unbridled happiness on the other end. So 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:54.120 you know, they're swinging into the pendle, and they're also 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:55.760 crying more d in the course of the day. They're 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.160 also feeling heartbroken more during the course of the day. 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:01.400 And humans have a lot more um humans adults. I 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:06.400 keep making that mistake in conversations. Uh, Us, adult humans 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:08.600 have a lot more nuance in the way that we 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:11.280 react emotionally. To the world. Well, a lot of it 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:15.800 too is mimicking your environment and learning these social cues. 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:17.880 And we'll talk more about this in terms of mirror 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:19.840 neurons in a second, but I did want to point 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:24.640 out that babies actually smile in the womb, and previous 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:27.720 to four D scanners, which produced three D images that 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.480 move in real time, it was thought that babies smiled 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.880 only after learning the behavior about six weeks after they 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.560 were born. But it was Dr Stewart Campbell who was 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.720 the first to capture these images of baby smiling in 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.200 the womb, and his idea for this lag of after 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.600 they're born, this six week lag of smiling, is that 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:51.840 in the womb, it's safe, it's warm, so you're able 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.840 to leisurely float about without a worry and perhaps smile. Yeah, 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:58.000 of course you'd smile on that right, right, Sure, But 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:00.600 he's saying that once you're born, you know, all of 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.120 a sudden, you're just bombarded with all the stimuli, and 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:05.760 so that's a smile and relaxation is sort of the 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:08.880 furthest things from a child or baby's mind at that point. 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:11.720 And that made me think about when we've talked about 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:17.200 children's brains in particular babies being soaked in neurotransmitters which 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.560 are faring around all the data that they're taking in. 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:21.760 And that makes sense to me, you know, because that 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:24.840 first six weeks it's just trying to make sense of 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.159 all these different sensations. So smile is going to have 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.000 to wait, you know. On the subject of smiles, also 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.200 found some stats about the world smiles UH, and that 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:38.680 this particular starters looking at found that countries in East 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:43.440 Asia Japan and Southeast Asia Thailand, of the Philippines, this 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:45.560 is where you would find the most smiles per capita 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:48.600 um and then UH, where as if you looked at 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:52.560 Northern European countries, Scandinavian countries, in the Eastern Bloc countries, 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:55.880 you would see considerably a less, not like the least 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.080 smiles per capita in those areas. That's interesting because I 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:00.920 was recently at a with a party for a kid 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:05.160 and there was a large contingent of German parents there, 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.920 and I noticed that in the conversations that I had 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:11.479 with the parents that um, you know, you begin to 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.599 notice your own behavior in this group situation, that I 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:17.800 was doing the smiling head nodding thing a lot more 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.560 than the German parents were, because I think that for 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:24.760 me socialized in America, that's a cue for I'm listening 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.960 to you, I'm agreeing, I'm encouraging you. Yes, yeah, that 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:31.640 little voice that comes on your head, it says all right, 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.080 grinn and not grinn and not. They just convey that 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:36.000 you you were listening and you were in some on 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:37.880 some level agreeing with what they're saying, even if you 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:40.680 are just completely tuning up. Okay, so when I'm grinning 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.320 and nodding, let's take a closer look at what is 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.560 actually going on. Is it sort of like a smile 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:47.880 one oh one when it comes to our brains and 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:52.160 our muscles. So if you see something that pleases you, 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:54.560 you have these neuronal signals that travel from the cortex 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:56.640 of your brain to the brain stem. Now, the brain 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:58.520 stom is the most primitive part of our brain. Right 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.200 from there, the cranial muscles carry the signal further towards 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:06.159 the smiling muscles in your face, in particular something called 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.919 the zygo madocus major muscles, and that draws up the 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.599 corners of your mouth. So once they contract, a positive 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.120 feedback loop goes back to the brain and reinforces this 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:20.360 feeling of joy or pleasure or whatever it is that 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:24.000 has made you smile. Now we have a lot more 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:27.839 insight into a true blue smile. This is the crinkling 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:31.960 of the eyes kind of smile. Because of someone named 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.040 m A. Bungamin Douchen is called the douch smile. I'm 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.280 glad you tackled Sin's name because I was puzzling over 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:40.800 that one. I slaughtered his his first name, for sure, 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:43.320 but Dushan, I think, you know, not too bad. But 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.799 he did experiments where he would actually zap single muscles 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:50.279 all over the face with electrodes to try to figure 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:54.320 out all these different expressions and emotions that we show. 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.520 And that's how he came to figure out that there's 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.680 a true blue smile that you see. Yeah, one of 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.760 the sixty different expressions that he u electrocuted into place 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.200 and then photographed. And actually, if you go to stuff 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:09.400 to Blow your Mind dot com, uh, you will see 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.120 that we have uploaded a gallery if some of these images, 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:13.760 not all sixty because I think that would just be 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:15.600 a bit much, but some of these images so you 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:17.680 can see what we're talking about, because they're brilliant. There's 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:20.560 this one older gentleman that is the test subject in 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:26.320 most of these photos, and it's uh at once hilarious 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:31.160 and horrifying to see his face contorted the electricity into 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.440 these different emotional states because his hair is all kind 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:37.080 of mussed up anyway, so you know, he's got this 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.000 terrifying smile spreading over his face, and his hair just 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:42.960 kind of looks like it's a bit on end uh 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.960 and then you you know, you see the electrodes. Uh. So, yes, 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.440 it's very interesting stuff. But that's how to Shan figured 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:51.920 out what this smile, this true blue smile was, because 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:56.440 again it's the zygomatic major muscle that's turning up the lips. 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:00.520 But also you have this orbicularious oculi muscle and that 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:04.200 raises the cheeks informs those cross feet around the eyes. 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:06.200 I think everybody kind of knows what that looks like, 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:07.760 right you have an idea in your head right now. 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:10.200 I always think about my grandmother, you know, and her 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:15.040 very sweet and joyous smiles and what that looks like. Yeah, 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.280 and then the the eventual smile lines that you hear 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:20.520 about in people's faces. Yeah, they say, oh, don't don't 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:22.360 laugh too much, because then you'll have smile lines when 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:24.480 you get older. So there's this idea that you see 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:27.800 something it pleases you. But there's also the idea that 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:30.160 you're talking to someone, they're smiling at you, and what 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:33.680 do you do? You smile back? Yeah, you know, I 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:35.839 feel like I encountered that version of smiling more than 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:40.280 like spontaneous by myself smiling. Because if I'm by myself 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.000 and I'm reading something that I'm enjoying, I mean, occasionally 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:45.640 i may laugh out loud, but for the most part, 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:49.199 I'm I'm probably not smiling. I'm thinking maybe I should, 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:51.600 I should experiment on myself with a camera or something. 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:54.200 But and smiling really creepily you're right now, just to 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:56.160 see you feel smile, that's kind of creepy smile. That 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.760 seems like now it's a creepy smile. Well, the thing, 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.320 this is what I think is interesting about when you 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:04.800 smile at a person who's smiling back at you. It's 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.760 because those neurons that fire both when we observe and 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:11.120 when we take parton in action, those are called mirror neurons. 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:14.800 So when we smile, mirror neurons simulate our own smiling. 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.839 So on one level, you can't not smile. Yeah, it's 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:21.959 it's an innate in state to imitate each other. We 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:23.920 see that smile, and then the smile forms in our 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.120 own face. Uh. It's uh, you know, ties into a 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:29.839 synchronicity of our body, our actions, even when we speak 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:32.840 to each other. Um, you know, like the whole the 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:35.000 old idea that you know you're you're someone who's grown 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:36.960 up in the South and you don't really talk with 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:40.160 the Southern accident until you're pulled over by a Southern cop, 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:42.560 and then your boice becomes a little Suddenly there are 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.560 all these Southern inflections that you thought you had abandoned 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:49.360 or outgrown. Um. I find myself doing that a lot. 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.200 Not not being pulled over by Southern cops all the time, 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.400 but I'll be I'll be talking to somebody and I'll 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.720 fall into some of their speech patterns, and and then 0:09:57.760 --> 0:09:59.880 I'll start freaking out, thinking, oh my goodness, they think 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.280 some sort of a complete nut who's only able to 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:07.360 communicate with people by mimicking the person he's communicating with. Well, 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:09.920 I think it's just showing that you're getting the person 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:11.720 you're trying to connect with them. Yeah, I mean, that's 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.840 that's what the research here shows is that I'm not crazy. 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:18.439 It shows that this is part of our normal interactions 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.840 with people, that when we engage with someone in conversation, 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:23.960 we make eye contact and we have to go and 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.840 sync with each other. It's kind of a almost kind 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.679 of a Star Trek mind meld that's happening, except in 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.360 a very real sense. That's that's more amazing than any fantasy. Well, 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.880 I think it points back to you, this exquisite external 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:40.319 stimuli machine that we have within us. And Charles Darwin 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:44.200 he actually said, you know, I mean, besides you know, 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.079 being known for evolution in biology, he was actually one 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:51.640 of the early experimental psychologists. And he thought, you know, 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.680 maybe these facial expressions don't come from within. Maybe they 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.480 are external to us. So it's not just us broadcasting 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:01.480 our mental state of mind. And he thought, maybe these 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:04.720 expressions can determine your mental state. So this is something 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:09.360 we now know as facial feedback hypothesis. And he wrote 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:11.800 the nineteen or excuse me, the eighteen seventy two book 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:15.400 The Expression of Emotions and Man and Animals, which came 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:19.600 to that conclusion that the universality of facial expressions owed 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:23.760 to the evolutionary origin of it. So this all turns 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:26.320 out to be pretty spot on, and there are a 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:30.160 lot of studies that support that. And one of probably 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.640 the most well known studies, there's several variations on this, 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:39.040 is a study of pencils stuck in the mouth, in 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:43.200 which the person has to then evaluate fake smiles versus 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:47.559 real smiles. Yes, and I challenge anyone who's listening and 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:51.040 not driving a car or doing anything remotely dangerous, uh, 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:54.960 that has a pencil around a clean pencil. Uh. You know, 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.040 if that pencil has germs on it, that's your your 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.280 own business. But if you put that pencil and hold 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:02.280 it between your teeth, try to smile, and you will 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:06.920 find that you're smiling abilities are somewhat hindered actually too. 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:10.520 And if you take that that pencil and you put 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:14.760 it uh in a vertical position so that it's just 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:19.040 under your lip, that will actually form a frown, which 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:23.199 you know, again that's a different pencil studying. Many variations 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.280 on this, but the one I'm thinking about was conducted 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:30.800 by social psychologist Pold Nightenthal and it was a mimicking study. Again, 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:32.839 it was this idea that Darwin was saying, Hey, it's 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.360 not necessarily internal. It can come externally. And so she 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:38.719 had one group of participants asked to look at these 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.600 photos of people smiling and determine whether or not it 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:44.000 was real or fake and hold that pencil in their mouth, 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.240 and then the other group was asked to identify real 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:48.880 and fake smiles, but they didn't have the pencil in 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:50.599 their mouth. Well, okay, of course, it turned out that 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:53.199 the people who had the pencil in their mouth had 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:57.760 a harder time identifying the true blue smiles because that 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.760 whole mechanism of their rare neurons and their ability to 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:05.839 mimic that smile was interrupted. So the ability to mimic 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:09.240 the smile influences our power to understand them and our 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:12.320 power to feel that emotion. So they didn't get the 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:16.199 emotional lift that their counterparts, who were not hindered and 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.000 could identify a real smile got when they looked at 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.760 that true blue smile. It's another uh, all this information 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:26.040 is just another great argument for that mind body connection 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:28.040 that we've talked about again again. They had the idea 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.959 that we're not this brain that's sealed up in this 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.679 body suit. We are and we're not this rider on 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.160 this horse where a centaur where this uh, this can 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.440 joint being of brain and body and uh and to 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:41.480 the you know the quote that I mentioned earlier, which 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.440 actually came from Paula Needenthal, were not these uh these 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.200 magic chess our cat grins who are just floating in 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.080 the middle of space. That that grin is attached to 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:51.920 our body. That's a part of our body, and it's 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.720 it's part of this facial communication system that we have. Yeah, 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:57.000 it's telling your brain something about the world and how 0:13:57.040 --> 0:13:59.319 you should feel. All right, let's take a quick break 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:02.840 and when we get back, when you're talking about smiles, happiness, 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:15.120 life expectancy, and chopsticks. All right, we are back. Does 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.880 flashing a grin make you happier? It's the question, and 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:22.400 could you live longer? Yes, because that's the big question 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:25.320 that sort of arises out of what we've discussed so far. Um, 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.200 we've talked about the way that it is the smiles 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:30.320 are as part of our communications array. It's a part 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:34.240 of our means of communing with other individuals who were 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:38.120 talking to about sharing things that are smile worthy. So 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:40.800 to what extent does it have a positive impact on 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:44.960 longevity and just sort of mental health? In general, especially 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:47.920 when you consider that smiling um in studies has shown 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:51.320 to reduce courses all levels of stress hormone levels and 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:56.560 increase endorphins that feel good hormone HW. Can you study 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.000 this right? Well? One way, of course is to look 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.960 at older pick ars of somebody, particularly pictures in say 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.520 a yearbook or baseball card photos. Both of these factor 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.000 into a couple of different studies that we're about to discuss. 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:11.360 As far as the yearbook goes, researchers at De Paul 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:15.040 University in Greencastle, Indiana analyzed the college yearbook photos of 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.840 six hundred and fifty five alumni and ranked the smiles 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:19.800 and those photographs in the scale of two which is 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:23.360 your complete gloomy, gus angsty teenager smile to a full tin, 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.920 which is your complete electrodes attached to the face, grim 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:30.000 beaming from ear to ear smile. And the participants in 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:31.880 these studies were also asked a series of questions about 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.280 their relationships, that status, their divorce history, and UH, and 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:39.120 the non smilers were actually more likely, it turned out 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:40.920 to be divorced, and the people who smiled at the most. 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:43.000 Now then they also did some follow up on this 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:45.800 right UH, they performed a second round of smile rankings, 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.720 this time recruiting sixty one adults fifty five years older 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:51.360 who are willing to hand over a handful of photographs 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:53.480 from when they were ages five to twenty two, and 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:55.680 once again, the people who smiled the most in their 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.400 photographs were least likely to be divorced. Okay and the 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:03.840 University of California, Berkeley, they also studied as a thirty 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:08.000 year longitudinal study of yearbook photos of women who had 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:12.640 the best, you know, truest smiles, and they found the 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.120 same sort of thing that after a thirty year study 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:17.120 of those people who had those true blue smiles, that 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.840 women who smiled the most and those photos had the 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:25.000 happier lives, happier marriages, and fewer setbacks, which leads me 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.720 to the baseball cards study, which is very similar. This 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:33.040 is a Wayne State University research project examining the baseball 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.520 card photos of major league players in nineteen fifty two, 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:39.480 and players who didn't smile in their pictures lived an 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:42.960 average of only seventy two point nine years, while players 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:46.240 with beaming smiles they lived in average of seventy nine 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:48.560 point nine years. So with this data suggests is that 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.920 smiling increased life expectancy. Now, some people will look at 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:54.960 these studies and say, okay, yeah, but in terms of 0:16:55.400 --> 0:17:00.400 cultural responses to smiling, men are sometimes not encouraged smile. 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:03.680 So perhaps that person was happy, but they just didn't smile. 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:08.600 Or perhaps the person smiling was thinking about something that 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:11.840 really sort of made them feel warm and fuzzing on 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.480 the inside. Maybe they were thinking about their children, and 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:16.280 so at that very moment they got a picture of 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:18.680 what that person's frame of mind was, but that wasn't 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:21.560 necessarily true for how they conducted the rest of their lives. Yeah, 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:24.600 I mean, there's plenty of room to pick this apart, 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:27.040 you know, Stanley, there because there are a lot of 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.119 people who were significantly happier after they got out of 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:31.880 high school. For instance, there are a lot of people 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:34.960 who for whom everything after high school was just a 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:38.359 backward gaze to the brilliance that was their senior year. 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:40.040 I mean, and then when you start to your point, 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:44.600 when you start looking about the differences internationally and culturally, um, 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:46.199 you know, how would the study have looked if it 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:48.560 had it been conducted in Thailand? How would it look 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:53.280 had it been conducted in Scandinavian country. So one say 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:57.119 that that's far harder to pick apart. Has to do 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:02.960 with stress and chopsticks. Yes, Now, unlike the pencil scenario 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:04.760 where you stick a pencil in your mouth and suddenly 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.760 you're you're inhibited from smiling, you can, of course take 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.880 two chopsticks and you can force a smile. Um, I've 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:14.919 never done that. Was this a thing? Is this like 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.000 a horsing around with chopsticks kind of gag? Or is 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.080 this just something that thought up of the experiment. I 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:22.880 think it was just for the experiment because what they 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:27.240 could do with these chopsticks is they could manipulate more muscles. 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.800 We were talking about hundred sixty nine participants who muscles 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:35.680 were manipulated with chopsticks into a neutral expression, a standard 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:38.719 smile or a doc in smile. Because that way they 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:43.879 could test all these different stress reactions against those mimicking 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:48.680 neuronal signals that were going up to the brain. Right, So, 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:52.920 in addition to the chopstick placement, some were explicitly instructed 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:55.520 to smile. Then, of course this is where the stress 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:57.960 comes in. They were subjected to a series of stress 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:02.480 inducing multitasking activities which they struggle to perform, of course, 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:06.040 because they have chopsticks in their face while continuing to 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:08.960 hold the chopsticks um, and the subjects heart rates and 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:13.480 self reported stress levels were monitored throughout, So those who 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:16.760 were instructed to smile recovered from these stressful activities with 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.959 lower heart rates than those who held neutral expressions, and 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:24.720 those with duchene smiles were the most relaxed of all, 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.600 with the most positive effects. And those with four smiles 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:31.080 held only by the chopsticks also reported more positive feelings 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:32.840 than those who didn't smile at all. So, I mean, 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:37.560 the big story here is that um neutral expressions, they 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.640 have more stress or that they seem to uh not 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:45.280 be able to weather this multitasking with the lower heart rates, right, 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.040 But those with that true blue smile, that duchene smile, 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:53.440 they have sailed away on this and even the fake 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:57.959 smiles actually had a positive influence. And that's really telling 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:00.119 as well and interesting because you tend to think of 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:02.960 the fake smile like when you encounter like that genuine 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:08.040 fake smile on somebody's face, uh, you you often think you're, like, 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:09.840 what kind of monster is on the other side of it? 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:12.439 What kind of just complete emotional blank slate, am I 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:16.040 actually having a conversation with And in reality, here's this 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:18.959 person who's I mean, they're wearing the mask, but the 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:21.520 mask is wearing them, you know, I know. It's just 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:24.440 thinking about two examples of that. One is the beauty 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:28.399 queen smile, which can be a terrifying smile also because 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:31.199 you know, there's a large amount of drag, makeup and 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:33.879 gender performance going on. And the second thing is the 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.200 mayor from the Nightmare before Christmas? Do you remember this? 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:40.520 He had a frown and he had a smile, and 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:42.960 so it would revolve around depending on you know, who 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:46.520 he was constituent he was talking to. Um. But yeah, 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:49.080 I mean this is this is the interesting thing about 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:51.919 even that terrifying fake smile is going to give you 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.880 a little bit of a lift. And here is yet 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.600 another study about smiling, and this one has to do 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:01.000 with pain. Um. It turns out at people who frowned 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.840 during an unpleasant procedure, they report feeling more pain than 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:07.399 those who do not. This is a study that was 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.280 published in the Journal of Pain. And what happened is 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.679 that the researchers applied heat to the forums of twenty 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:16.840 nine participants who were asked to either make unhappy, neutral, 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.359 or relax faces during the procedure, and lo and behold. 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:23.639