Can you really feel happy if you have a 'smile'?



As the proverb says, “Laughing at the gate brings good fortune,” it is often said that if you are happy, you will naturally become happy. A study on

the facial feedback hypothesis , in which a facial expression actually triggers the emotion of that facial expression, found that smiling, even with a fake smile, can affect mood.

A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration | Nature Human Behavior
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01458-9

Does Faking a Smile Make You Happier? The Latest Findings Are In : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/does-faking-a-smile-make-you-happier-the-latest-findings-are-in

In a paper published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal `` Nature Human Behavior '' in October 2022, a research group led by Nicholas A. Coles of the Center for Language Information Research at Stanford University recruited 3878 people from 19 countries. We asked people to make facial expressions and conducted an experiment to measure the degree of happiness at that time.

Participants were given three tasks to reproduce a smirk and a blank expression. The first is to hold the pen in your mouth and raise the corners of your mouth, or hold the pen between your lips and tie your mouth. The second is to show a picture of a smiling face or an expressionless face and imitate it. The third is to pull the corners of your lips toward your ears and lift your cheeks, or maintain a blank expression. A questionnaire was used to measure happiness.



The experiment was carried out carefully so as not to interfere with the purpose of the study and affect the results of the happiness measurement. As part of this, the participants were told, ``This is an experiment to see how obstruction of movement and attention affects a mathematical test.'' I was challenged. Also, in addition to making facial expressions, he seemed to be able to mix decoy instructions such as ``Please put your left hand behind your head and blink once a second for 5 seconds''.

When we examined the results of the questionnaire after the task of making facial expressions, we found that in all cases there was some improvement in happiness after making a smile. In addition, the effect was higher in the task of imitating facial expressions and the task of moving the face with the hand than the task of holding the pen in the mouth.

Regarding this result, the research group said, ``These results suggest that facial feedback not only amplifies ongoing euphoria, but may also cause euphoria even in neutral situations.'' said.

It is also possible that doing active tasks, such as mimicking facial expressions, simply keeps them from getting bored, which may have affected their sense of well-being. To investigate this, the research group conducted an analysis comparing a smile with an active decoy task, such as placing a hand behind the head. thing. In addition, in order to investigate whether positive stimuli affect smiles, some participants were asked to look at a happy image after the smiling task. It was the same with or without the image.



Researchers speculate that smirking can affect mood because you're smiling, or that smiling can trigger emotional biological processes. I'm guessing it's because it's automatically activated.

However, experts disagreed as to whether common advice like smiling in the mirror every morning would significantly improve your mood.

The research group wrote in the paper, ``It is possible that relatively small facial feedback effects can accumulate and lead to meaningful changes in happiness over time. Many (but not all) of the authors of this paper believe that facial feedback interventions are unlikely to be similar, given that they do not appear as such.

in Science, Posted by log1l_ks