and relive a particularly stressful experience. The other half
were simply shown how to create, on their faces, the
expressions that corresponded to stressful emotions, such as
anger, sadness, and fear. The second group, the people who
were acting, showed the same physiological responses, the same
heightened heart rate and body temperature, as the first group.
A few years later, a German team of psychologists
conducted a similar study. They had a group of subjects look at
cartoons, either while holding a pen between their lips — an
action that made it impossible to contract either of the two
major smiling muscles, the risorius and the zygomatic major —
or while holding a pen clenched between their teeth, which had
the opposite effect and forced them to smile. The people with
the pen between their teeth found the cartoons much funnier.
These findings may be hard to believe, because we take it as a
given that first we experience an emotion, and then we may —
or may not — express that emotion on our face. We think of the
face as the residue of emotion. What this research showed,
though, is that the process works in the opposite direction as
well. Emotion can also start on the face. The face is not a
secondary billboard for our internal feelings. It is an equal
partner in the emotional process.