2020 has been a tough year so far, but let's turn that frown upside down. Recently, at the University of South Australia, it was confirmed that smiling can trick the mind into being more positive. Yet, in a pandemic world where no one knows what each other's chins look like, much less a pearly white grin, how can we attempt to use this evidence to improve attitudes for the better? The study, published in Experimental Psychology, showed that facial muscular activity alters both facial and body expressions which typically generate more positive emotions. According to lead researcher Dr. Marmolejo-Ramos "when you forcefully practise smiling, it stimulates the amygdala -- the emotional centre of the brain -- which releases neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state."
Now back to the issue of masks disguising our smiles...
In my opinion, the implementation of masks has required me to focus more on what others are saying and improve eye contact to convey emotion and meaning. Masks make it more difficult to hear others, and certainly more difficult to see a smile. Fortunately, the human face has a multitude of muscles and several of those used to genuinely smile involve the eyes and forehead. Alas, we can confirm a sincere smile and happiness by observing the eyes even if the rest of one's face is covered! I believe this will allow us to practice beneficence because we are seeking to do the most good in lifting not only our own spirits, but those around us. Let's use this information to improve mental health everywhere.
Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200813123608.htm ; https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/10.1027/1618-3169/a000470
The ability to essentially trick your body into releasing neurotransmitters basically seems like a self-made placebo effect. I wonder if the amount of neurotransmitters released from forcing a smile is comparable to the amount released when one is genuinely happy and smiling? It also would be interesting to see how the levels differ in those who are happy, but are not prone to smiling much. I would expect those individuals who are less likely to smile when they are happy to experience lower levels of neurotransmitter release than those who do smile when happy, as they are missing that extra physiological signal.
ReplyDeleteWhile we can agree on the fact that smiling can create more positive emotions, I am curious on whether people are able to identify genuine smiles from posed smiles and how that would affect their emotions. As humans, we have the ability to think critically. The downside to this is that we tend to overthink the interactions that we have with others. According to the article, "Human perception and biosignal-based identification of posed and spontaneous smiles" Perusquia-Hernandez et al. discovered that there is a difference between spontaneous smiles and posed smiles. They used an electromyography (EMG) that detects the differences in magnitude, onset time, and speed of spontaneous and posed smiles. The detection of the EMG revealed a 94% accuracy. The researchers also confirmed that an everyday person cannot detect the difference as accurately. Therefore, this leads to the question if wearing masks significantly affects the social interactions that we have with people daily.
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DeletePerusquía-Hernández, M., Ayabe-Kanamura, S., & Suzuki, K. (2019). Human perception and biosignal-based identification of posed and spontaneous smiles. PloS One, 14(12), 1. doi:http://dx.doi.org.dml.regis.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0226328
Just like a thumbs up can have different meanings across cultures, I would like to mention that certain cultures do not use smiling as a way to present themselves as happy. In a study conducted by Talhelm et al. (2019), they found that those in East Asian smiled less in their student ID photos as well as when they walked outside as compared to European Americans. This may be as a result of differing definitions of happiness or, even smiling for that matter, cross-culturally and/or cultural and societal norms (Talhelm et al., 2019). Thus, it would make it difficult to gauge emotions such as happiness through the eyes.
ReplyDeleteThat study relates to the directionality of the mind-body connection that I learned about in my cognitive neuroscience class in undergrad. So there are several theories on this and I don't remember the names or the specifics of how they work, but the main takeaway is that the relationship is actually bidirectional. Normally we think of it as only being one-way (ex. you're feeling nervous/scared so that cognitive/emotional process affects your behavior/bodily changes: you may be fidgeting, sweating, have darting glances, talking faster, etc.), however, that's not where it stops. Consciously changing your physical behavior to mimic the respective behavior which would be expressed by whatever emotional state, can in fact help inch you towards feeling that way. Obviously going back and forth between smiling and frowning won't make you flip-flop between actually being happy or sad, but the relationship is still present. This makes me wonder then how much of the decreased rates of happiness during the pandemic could be linked to decreased smiling because of masks. I don't actually think it would be a whole lot, but it is an interesting thought.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of the quote you provided in the first paragraph from Dr. Marmalejo-Ramos, forcefully smiling stimulates the amygdala, which in turn releases neurotransmitters and encouraging an emotionally positive state, makes me think about what Christina said in regard to different cultures. Though there may be differing definitions of happiness between cultures, if the statement that Dr. Marmalejo-Ramos is accurate, wouldn't we expect smiling to be more prevalent among different cultures? Or perhaps varying definitions of happiness and expression is something that can be studied further?
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