Quality smiles can indicate future success and even predict life span
Smiles are a universal sign of happiness and are the most easily recognized facial expression. Sonograms show that babies smile in the womb. Happy people smile 40 to 50 times each day.
Scientists have identified as many as 17 different types of smiles, each using between five and 53 separate muscles.
In the mid-19th century, French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne noticed that one particular smile contracted both the zygomatic major muscles (which tug the lips upward) and the orbicularis oculi muscles (that encircle the eye socket and squeeze the corners of the eye into crow’s feet). This eyes-and-mouth smile, now known as the “Duchenne” smile, is considered the true indication of joy. The “Botox smile,” on the other hand, activates only the zygomatic major muscles. The person is perceived as smiling, but the smile seems insincere.
Smiles can be good indicators of future success. A 2001 study at UC Berkeley tracked the lives of women who had the biggest smiles in their yearbook photos. Those with the largest smiles lived the happiest lives, had the most enduring marriages and suffered the fewest setbacks over the next 30 years.
Smiles may also predict life span.
Researchers at Michigan’s Wayne State University found that professional baseball players who smiled broadly on their baseball cards lived an average of seven years longer than their less smiling teammates.
The act of smiling is good for your heart. Researchers at the University of Kansas trained 169 students to smile while holding chopsticks in their mouths. (The chopsticks forced their mouths into the shape of a smile.) Students were then instructed to have a mouth-only smile, a Duchenne smile or a neutral expression. When the participants were involved in stressful activities, the Duchenne smilers had lower heart rates than either of the other groups.
Smiling may help fight disease. Thirty-three healthy adult women at the Indiana State University Sycamore Nursing Center were divided into two groups. One group watched humorous videos, the other watched a video on tourism. The humor group had significantly higher levels of natural killer cells in their blood and reported less stress.
Smiling can even decrease pain. People who frowned during an unpleasant procedure reported feeling more pain than those who did not, according to a study in the 2008 Journal of Pain.
It’s well-known that smiling is contagious. Our brains are hardwired for sociability, and when we interact with others, we form a kind of neural bridge between our brains. When someone else is happy, we tend to feel the very same way.
That may explain the results of a 2008 study published in the British Medical Journal. Scientists discovered that when one person is happy, a nearby friend has a 25 percent chance of becoming happy, too. A spouse experiences an 8 percent increase, and the next-door neighbor goes up 34 percent.
You don’t even have to be happy to reap the benefits. In 1989, social psychologist Robert Zajonc found that subjects who simply repeated long “e” sounds that simulated smiling felt better than subjects who made long “u” sounds that mimicked frowns.
So do yourself a big favor. Say “Cheese!” And spread the good cheer.
This story was originally published June 2, 2015 at 5:27 AM with the headline "Quality smiles can indicate future success and even predict life span."