“Fake smile can make you genuinely happy”: study
A study conducted by Stanford University researchers found that faking a smile can actually lift one’s mood.
According to one theory that explains this behaviour in humans, physiologic changes deceive the brain into believing that mood and emotional changes have occurred. A grin may trick the brain into thinking that evokes actual happiness, just as a racing heartbeat is interpreted as fear or excitement.
According to the principal researcher of the study, “conscious experience” of emotion can precede genuine feeling.
According to Dr Nicholas Coles, raising one’s eyebrows can make someone feel angry, and the same is true of smiling. Dr Coles and his team examined earlier research and discovered plenty of evidence in favour of the claim that smiling artificially makes people happier.
As a result, researchers created a new experiment called “The Many Smiles Collaboration” in which 3,878 participants from 19 different nations were observed.
The other half of the participants had to look at pictures of puppies, kittens, and flowers while holding pens in their mouths. Others were told to mimic smiles by puffing out their cheeks and lips while holding a pen in their mouths.
People were instructed to just move their facial muscles in a way that mimics smiling.
The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, found that it was important to know how to fake a smile.
It was discovered that the pen-in-mouth method was useless. Coles stated that they did not know why the procedure was less effective but that it might be because of the stress this activity puts on the teeth. The teeth are not tensed or clenched when someone smiles sincerely.
