The Definitive Book of Body Language

The Magic of Smiles and Laughter

early part of the nineteenth century when French scientist

Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne used electrodiagnostics and

electrical stimulation to distinguish between the smile of real

enjoyrnent and other kinds of smiling. He analysed the heads

of people executed by guillotine to study how the face muscles

worked. He pulled face muscles from many different angles

to catalogue and record which muscles caused which smiles.

He discovered that smiles are controlled by two sets of

muscles: the zygomatic major muscles, which run down the

side of the face and connect to the corners of the mouth

and the orbicularis oculi, which pull the eyes back. The zygo-

matic majors pull the mouth back to expose the teeth and

enlarge the cheeks, while the orbicularis oculi make the eyes

narrow and cause 'crow's feet'. These muscles are important to

understand because the zygomatic majors are consciously con-

trolled - in other words, they are used to produce false smiles

of fake enjoyment to try to appear friendly or subordinate.

The orbicularis oculi at the eyes act independently and reveal

the true feelings of a genuine smile. So the first place to check

the sincerity of a smile is to look for wrinkle lines beside

the eyes.

A natural smile produces characteristic

wrinkles around the eyes - insincere

people smile only with their mouth.

In the enjoyment smile, not only are the lip corners pulled up,
but the muscles around the eyes are contracted, while non-
enjoyment smiles involve just the smiling lips.