Mail Online

Why faking a smile is good for your marriage

SOCIAL isolation and mask wearing during the pandemic means some of us may have got out of the habit of producing a smile. That seems to be true of Japan at least, where there’s been a recent boom in classes to teach people how to do it.

Although I wouldn’t want to spend time and money on this, there’s a surprising amount of evidence for the beneficial impact of a smile.

In a 2001 study by the University of California, researchers analysed pictures of women taken in their 20s and found that, decades later, those judged to have smiled most naturally were happier and far more likely to have married and stayed happily married than those who didn’t. This is possibly because ‘smiling people attract other happier people, and the combination may lead to a greater likelihood of a long-lasting marriage’, the researchers said. But if you don’t feel like smiling, faking it in a particular way may be beneficial. New research in the journal Human Behaviour, involving more than 3,800 people, showed that mimicking the smiling faces of actors in photos made people feel happier — as did making the corners of their mouths turn upwards using facial muscles. But the ‘pen-in-mouth’ technique — where you grip a pen between your teeth, to make your facial muscles curl up in a simulated smile shape — didn’t make much difference.

So why should faking a smile make you feel more cheerful? One theory is that it stimulates the amygdala — the emotional centre of your brain — to release chemicals that make us feel more cheerful. Whatever the explanation, there seems to be truth in that old saying: ‘Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone’.

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2023-05-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-05-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

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