What is in a smile? Is a smile just a smile? Or, is there more to it?
My wife and I were chatting recently about “fake smiles.” It got me thinking about the concept. I shared with her that there is a “real smile” name: it’s a Duchenne Smile. A Duchenne smile is the one that reaches your eyes, making the corners wrinkle up with crow’s feet (you know the one!).
It’s the smile most of us recognize as the most authentic expression of happiness. The name comes from Guillaume Duchenne, a 19th-century scientist whose major contributions center on mapping the muscles of the human body, including the muscles that control facial expression.
Smiles are ubiquitous, but seemingly, mostly when we are younger (too bad!): Research shows that children smile an average of 400 times per day, compared to the average happy adult who smiles 40-50 times per day and the typical adult who smiles only 20 times per day.
You can probably remember as you read this some of the biggest smiles you’ve had in your life: what were those moments? Did you just smile thinking about it?
Smiles are useful, both for your physical health, and as a source of information in the world, too. Let’s dive into the latter a bit more below.
A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.
There are so many indicators from a smile, as a part of understanding body language. For more on this, you might explore people like Paul Ekman, Alexander Todorov, Joe Navarro, Mark Bowden, among others.
You can also consider what smiles mean across different cultures, too (we’ve got a resource below to help).
Keep scrolling for even more free resources to help you. It might even help you understand what was happening in the recent American presidential debate: Mark Bowden, Greg Hartley, Chase Hughes and Scott Rouse (aka The Behaviour Panel) explored the facial expressions and body language from the debate in this video.
Don’t forget to smile!
Need help decoding a smile?
This is some fascinating research (it’s a video) from Alexander if you want to go deep on “what’s in a face?”
Do cultures think about smiling differently? Do they actively smile more in one place than another? Research shows the answer is a resounding YES!
Renowned psychologist Paul Ekman explains the roots of our emotions―anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness―and shows how they cascade across our faces, providing clear signals to those who can identify the clues. As featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink, Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System offers intense training in recognizing feelings in spouses, children, colleagues, even strangers on the street.
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