A smile with love has so many positive effects on us: It stimulates the brain, makes us come across as friendly, and brings joy to the people around us. Whether we say hello to a stranger, we pass in the grocery store or wave to our neighbor while we’re on a run, adding a smile to these simple acts of kindness can make someone’s day go from drab to fab. A teacher wrote in the autograph book of one of his pupils years ago when he was just a child and he remembered it all through his life: “Smile awhile and while you smile another smiles, And soon there’s miles and miles of smiles. And life’s worthwhile because you smiled.” Said Victor Borge: “Smile is the shortest distance between two people.”
According to a study, smiling does not necessarily indicate that a person is happy. It is widely believed that smiling means we are happy, and it usually occurs when we are engaging with another person or group of people. Researchers from the University of Sussex, U.K., show this is not always the case. The way people often behave during one-to-one Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) is as if they were socially engaged, researchers said. They asked 44 participants aged 18-35 to play a geography quiz game consisting of nine difficult questions so that they often got the answer wrong. Seated participants interacted with a computer alone in a room while their faces were video recorded. After the quiz, the participants were asked to rate their subjective experience using a range of 12 emotions including ‘bored’, ‘interested’ and ‘frustrated’. Their spontaneous facial expressions were then computer analyzed, frame by frame, in order to judge how much they were smiling based on a scale of 0 to 1.
“According to some researchers, a genuine smile reflects the inner state of cheerfulness or amusement,” said Harry Witchel from Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS). “However, Behavioral Ecology Theory suggests that all smiles are tools used in social interactions; that theory claims that cheerfulness is neither necessary nor sufficient for smiling,” Mr. Witchel said. “Our study showed that in these Human-Computer Interaction experiments, smiling is not driven by happiness; it is associated with subjective engagement, which acts like a social fuel for smiling, even when socializing with a computer on your own,” he said.
Each of the thousands of ways of moving the muscles in our faces, serve to express and reinforce one of the six basic emotions, namely: anger, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, and surprise. The most powerful and profound facial expression of them all is the smile. Smiling is universally considered to be a way we display joy. It can communicate our internal world to people on the outside, and it can be a welcoming sign to new people. When we smile, our muscles can send feedback to our faces and help to boost our mood.and bring a few more smiles to our day.
Smile is a friendly gesture only among humans, whereas in almost all other species, especially primates, baring one’s teeth is a threat or a show of force. Charles Darwin was one of the first persons to suggest that our expressions may actually intensify our feelings. This theory is commonly known as the ‘feedback loop’ or even ‘facial feedback hypothesis’. Simply using the same muscles as smiling will put one in an instant happy mood. That is because use of those muscles is a part of how the brain evaluates mood. A smiling expression feeds on how we experience mood, therefore making us feel happier or even a joke seem funnier.
The importance of the eyes and forehead when smiling authentically are very critical. The genuine smile involves not just the muscles around the mouth, but also the ones that cause the cheeks to raise and the eyes to crescent. People who smile just with their mouths (let’s consider the “say cheese” smile when taking a photograph) don’t experience the same rewards as those who are smiling with their entire face; yes, no doubt they do experience some of the benefits, just to a lesser degree. People who tend more easily toward duchenne smiles self-report better life satisfaction and marriages; hence, it may be worth learning and experiencing how to smile with more of your face in the long run.
Smiling can trick our brain into believing we are happy which can then spur actual feelings of happiness. But it doesn’t end there. Study shows how the brain is connected to the immune system “over and over again”; depression weakens our immune system, while happiness on the other hand has been shown to boost our body’s resistance. What is superb is that just the physical act of smiling can make a huge difference in building our immunity. When we smile, the brain sees the muscle’s activity and assumes that humour is actually happening. It does not bother to sort out whether we are smiling because we are genuinely joyous, or because we just pretend.
Many see smiling simply as an involuntary response to things that bring you joy or inspire laughter. While this observation is certainly true, it overlooks an important point: smiling can be a conscious, intentional choice. It appears that whether your smile is genuine or not, it can act on our body and mind in a variety of positive ways, offering benefits for our health, our mood, and even the moods of people around us. Even forcing a fake smile is considered to legitimately reduce stress and lower our heart rate. There are plenty of more studies out there to make us smile. Smiling helps reduce the body’s response to stress and lower heart rate in tense situations; another study linked smiling to lower blood pressure, while yet another suggests that smiling leads to longevity.
Smiling improves our heart health in a meaningful way.The release of endorphins through smiling increases blood flow. Smiling has been associated with an increased HDL (the good cholesterol) levels in the body. Smiling also lowers the stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine). Thus, smiling and laughing more can improve overall heart health for sure! It also maintains our blood pressure. Neuropeptides are essentially required by the nerve cells for communication. These neuropeptides are responsible for the release of the happy chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) of the brain like dopamine, endorphins and serotonin. Whenever you smile these neurotransmitters are released in the body which not only relaxes the body but also helps manage our heart rate and blood pressure.
Smiling gives a boost to our immune system. Smiling and laughing initiates the release of serotonin in the body which increases the sense of happiness and well-being in the body. Serotonin also helps boost the immune system as it stimulates monocytes and lymphocytes (which are types of white blood cells that fight against infections in the body) and also regulates the release of cytokines (chemical messengers of the immune system).
Smiling tends to improve our relationships as well. People find us more attractive when we smile. Studies show that different areas of the brain light up when looking at pictures of people who are smiling versus who are not smiling. People who are smiling to any degree are generally labelled more attractive (and women are considered more trustworthy) than those with neutral expressions. At the workplace too, smiling improves our effectiveness.The benefits of smiling extend beyond interpersonal relationships to even the work environment. Smiling at your co-workers creates moments of connection that lead to greater productivity and teamwork. People in the service industry prove to have a more positive effect on customers when they smile. People in leadership positions tend to favour their employees who smile more regularly.
Smiling can cause us to be happy and experience happier emotions! This helps us to become more productive as we can have a better mindset. Although, this can also be said for the opposite, negative emotions can cause us to become drained and less productive, so best to keep on smiling. A 2013 study demonstrated that men who smiled during the day experienced more creative thoughts in terms of tackling the issues of their work. They were able to think of better, more creative solutions than those who did not smile. Basically, the creative process is enhanced with positive attitudes more than negative ones and smiling will help you feel better and become more creative when it comes to learning new tasks, processing information and coming up with decisions that actually solve problems.
One can make a better leader if one is in a position of power or aspiring to be in one if one keeps wearing a smile as a matter of routine. Smiling is a more effective leadership technique than having great management responsibilities. As they say, “Kill them with success and bury them with a smile!” Smiling enhances one’s looks and more often makes one look younger. One also comes across as more attractive On an average, the research has shown that you normally can look about three years younger. When we smile, it can naturally lift our face up and can fend off any frown lines that we may get. As a result, this can help us look younger. A smile is an inexpensive way to improve our looks for sure. Smiles are so attractive for more reasons than one. A smile suggests that you’re likeable, easy going, and empathetic. In fact, smiling actually makes you more attractive to those you smile at.
Wearing a smile tends to make us more approachable. Studies have shown people who smile are viewed by others as more attractive, reliable, relaxed, and even far more sincere. Seeing a smiling face activates the orbit frontal cortex, the region of our brain that processes sensory rewards. This in turn suggests that our brain feels rewarded when we see a smile. When it comes to the service industry, smiling is recommended as customers will be influenced in a positive way. will come across as more likable and friendly which in turn creates better interaction with customers and fellow employees. Researchers have discovered that smiling while on the job not only improved the overall mood, but it also made the employees appear more competent in their profession. Basically, smiling relays confidence in that you know what you are doing and customers pick up on that.
Bhushan Lal Razdan, formerly of the Indian Revenue Service, retired as Director General of Income Tax (Investigation), Chandigarh. Post-retirement.