AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Smiling has got to be the only facial expression that strangers think they can command. Smile - and it can be so annoying, right? But while we know that smiling can communicate your happiness or approachability to others, a new study shows that forcing a smile might improve your own mood. Sebastian Korb is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Essex in England where the study was done and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
SEBASTIAN KORB: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
RASCOE: Can you tell us, briefly, why did you do this study?
KORB: Well, we did the study because, on the one hand, it's an intuitive idea that, you know, we feel slightly better if we smile, and we feel slightly worse if we frown. And, indeed, this is an idea that goes back at least to the mid of the 19th century, to people like Charles Darwin and William James, who is considered one of the founding fathers of modern-day psychology.
So despite, you know, the intuitiveness of this hypothesis, of this idea, there is quite some debate amongst scientists whether or not this is true, so whether or not the expressions that we do in our face influence the way we feel.
RASCOE: Let me just jump in right here because you guys decided to attach electrodes to the participants in the study to force expressions. Now, I know this wasn't like a major zap (laughter), but it does sound kind of a little scary. Can you talk to me about that?
KORB: Yeah, I know. For some reason, most people, at first, they feel a bit, yeah, scared or not totally comfortable with the idea (laughter)...
RASCOE: With electrodes on their face - yeah, a little bit (laughter).
KORB: ...Of getting - yeah. But it's really not as bad as it sounds, at least not at the very weak intensities that we use.
RASCOE: So you did a small zap to force a smile, and you did find that it made a difference, right?
KORB: Absolutely. Yeah. So people reported that five seconds of activation of their smiling muscles made them feel somewhat more positive compared to no stimulation or stimulation of other muscles which are more related to sadness. That's what we found. And we also combined then - in addition to the stimulation on the face, we added also some images, positive images in one case or negative images in the other case, and that sort of even increased that effect.
RASCOE: So should we force a smile when we're not in a good mood to try to make ourselves feel better?
KORB: I would say yes, but at the same time, I would admit that it's not a silver bullet (laughter). You know, you can't cure depression just through smiling. But definitely there are small effects. It's more than just a face expression. It's also a posture. These things do affect how we feel, for sure.
RASCOE: That's Sebastian Korb, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Essex. Thank you so much for speaking with us today.
KORB: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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