Fake smiles can make your happier.
This idea is known as the facial feedback hypothesis, and researchers set out to either prove or disprove the theory in a new global study, finding strong evidence that posed smiles can actually make a person happier.
"The stretch of a smile can make people feel happy and the furrowed brow can make people feel angry; thus, the conscious experience of emotion must be at least partially based on bodily sensations," said Stanford research scientist Nicholas Coles, co-director of the Stanford Big Team Science Lab and director of the Psychological Science Accelerator.
"Over the past few years, the science took one step back and a few steps forward. But now we're closer than ever to understanding a fundamental part of the human condition: emotion," Coles said in a university news release. The theory is that the conscious experience of emotions is based on body sensations. One notable example of this is a racingAn early study of facial feedback found that a popular comic strip was funnier if participants were looking at it while holding a pen in theirIn 2016, 17 labs tried but could not replicate those results, which led some to doubt the theory.The researchers used three techniques believed to activate smile muscles.
Half of the participants in each group did these actions while looking at blank screens. The other half looked at cheerful images ofEveryone was also asked to use a neutral expression and did so while seeing the same images. The participants were even asked to do other small physical tasks, so they wouldn't know what was being studied, as well as to solve simple math problems.