The Magic of Smiles and LaughterWhy Smiling Is Contagious
The remarkable thing about a smile is that when you give it to
someone, it causes them to reciprocate by returning the smile,
even when you are both using fake smiles.
Professor Ulf Dimberg at Uppsala University, Sweden, con-
ducted an experiment that revealed how your unconscious
mind exerts direct control of your facial muscles. Using equip-
ment that picks up electrical signals from muscle fibres, he
measured the facial muscle activity on 120 volunteers while
they were exposed to pictures of both happy and angry faces.
They were told to make frowning, smiling or expressionless
faces in response to what they saw. Sometimes the face they
were told to attempt was the opposite of what they saw -
meeting a smile with a frown, or a frown with a smile. The
results showed that the volunteers did not have total control
over their facial muscles. While it was easy to frown back at a
picture of an angry man, it was much more difficult to pull a
smile. Even though volunteers were trying consciously to
control their natural reactions, the twitching in their facial
muscles told a different story - they were mirroring the expres-
sions they were seeing, even when they were trying not to.
Professor Ruth Campbell, from University College London,
believes there is a 'mirror neuron' in the brain that triggers the
part responsible for the recognition of faces and expressions
and causes an instant mirroring reaction. In other words,
whether we realise it or not, we automatically copy the facial
expressions we see.
This is why regular smiling is important to have as a part of
your body language repertoire, even when you don't feel like it,
because smiling directly influences other people's attitudes and
how they respond to you.
Science has proved that the more you smile, the
more positive reactions others will give you.