Smiling improves health by boosting the immune system, lowering blood pressure, and reducing stress induced hormones, similar to the effects of getting good sleep and exercising. Wearing a smile can uplift our mood, lead us to be more optimistic, and make us appear more approachable in social situations.

What happens in our brain when we smile?

When our facial muscles turn the corners of our mouth upwards, the brain releases neuropeptides that signal the hypothalamus, a small region in our brain, to release happy chemicals such as endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin, which elevate our mood, and reinforce the feeling of joy. This concept, known as the facial feedback hypothesis, states that our facial expressions tell our brain what emotion we are experiencing.

In 1988, a famous experiment was conducted by psychologist Fritz Strack wherein 175 university students were asked to either hold a pen between their teeth to make their mouth form a smile or to hold it between their lips to form a pout. Participants who had made the smiling face, tended to rate comics as funnier, and since they did not know that they had been smiling, it seemed that their expression affected their perception and mood.

Researchers claim that our expressions not only change how we feel, but also impact the intensity of our emotions. For instance, if we are happy and we smile, we will feel happier; and if we are sad, a smile will weaken our feeling of sadness and take us out of our grumpy mood. So based on this theory, if we are having a bad day, all we need to do is smile and we will almost instantaneously become happy! Sounds simple, right?

Researchers have identified approximately 19 different types of smiles, and only six are thought to occur when we are having a good time. Since our thoughts are an essential component that contribute to our overall mood, we also need to pay attention to how we interpret the smile.

Moreover, we sometimes respond in an opposite direction from our emotions. For instance, we may ‘cry with joy’. If the facial feedback hypothesis were to be 100% accurate, the crying would accordingly tell our brain that we were feeling sad. But that doesn’t happen.

Realistically speaking, smiling can’t solve our problems, and nor can it take away the unhappiness we may experience due to negative events. When we smile to cover feelings of embarrassment or pain, with the intention to trick our brains into believing that we are happy, we are essentially suppressing our feelings. Interestingly, a study that reviewed around 50 years of data suggested that if 100 people were to fake a smile, only seven would feel happier as a result. Even for those seven, the change in mood would be negligible. Furthermore, repression can raise our stress levels and cause us to dwell on the negative emotions for longer. So, does smiling actually help?

In closing, we can agree that a smile has the potential to boost our mood if we are having an off day, but the key is putting on a real smile, not a fake one. Repressing intense unpleasant emotions with a fake smile can make us feel invalidated, and in turn end up making us feel worse.

If we consider it necessary to fake a smile in certain situations, it is recommended that we internally validate our emotions, so we don’t fully suppress them. And when appropriate, we are mindful to go back and process any unpleasant feelings, so that we can work towards getting our real smiles back on.

Photo by Erick Tang on Unsplash