You're not going to believe me, but this
pen is about to make me happier.
Are you ready? Check it out.
Are you convinced? You shouldn't be because
I haven't told you what just happened.
Ok, here's the deal behind what I just
showed you. There's some research that
shows that when your body makes the face
of happiness, it actually causes you to
be happier. What do I mean by that? Well, the
idea is that by activating the muscles
in your face that are responsible for
smiling, you actually then experience
the emotion that goes with that muscle
activation. So the way that some
researchers did it back in the 1980s, was they used a simple
implement like a pen or a pencil, and
they had people hold this instrument in
their mouths in one of two ways. Either
in the way that I just showed you, like this,
which activates all of the muscles in
your face responsible for smiling -- go
ahead and try it yourself. Pick up a pen and bite
down on it like I just did. Get your
teeth on the pen itself, and you'll feel
your muscles that are usually used by
your face when you smile. They'll be
activated as well with the pen in your
mouth. So, half of the people in the study
would have done that with the pen. The
other half -- just to control for using a
pen in your mouth, to make sure that's
not what the effect was due to -- they had
the pen in their mouth like this.
Okay? So they were holding the pen so that
their teeth weren't touching it, and it
was protruding like this. And that
doesn't activate any of the muscles
responsible for smiling. So they showed
these people cartoons --
drawn out cartoons -- and asked them to rate how
funny these cartoons were.
And interestingly, what they found was that
the people holding the pen in their teeth
like this, in a way that activated
their smiling muscles -- they rated the
cartoons as being funnier than the
people who were holding the pen in the
other way. The idea being that the
cartoons didn't change, but the
participants' facial muscles had
changed. So what's going on here? It's that
having your muscles in a smiling
activation actually made the world seem
like a more pleasant place, compared to
when those muscles weren't activated.
This is all really crazy sounding, I know.
But there's been other research that's
replicated these effects, and importantly,
it's the case that you have to have the
muscles involved in real, actual smiling
to be activated, and not just kinda half
of those muscles. So for example, if I
hold the pen in my teeth but it still
isn't raising up the cheeks like this...
then there's a marginal increase in how
humorous cartoons are, according to
subsequent research. But it's not the
same as having the full, actual smiling
muscle network activated in your face.
There's a difference between real
smiling and a fake smile. So if you've
ever had your picture taken and you kind
of just lean back like this... you're not
really smiling. You're faking a smile.
You're getting close to a smile, but when
you look at the pictures later, you
know, you're not actually smiling. But
there's a kind of smile called the
"Duchenne" smile, which you can tell
because it makes little crinkles here
on the sides of your eyes. So you can
tell the difference between real smile
and a fake smile, and it turns out that
this way of holding the pen activates a
Duchenne smile, which is associated
with real happiness. Ok, but what am I
getting at? Am I actually telling you to
hold pending your mouth as you go about
your day?
No, of course not. But the real point is
that by simulating happiness in yourself,
you might find a real increase in
positive emotions as you go about your
day. So it's not, you know, holding a
pen in your mouth, but find
opportunities to smile. Live your life in
a way where you are pushing yourself to
display that positivity, and over time,
that might lead to greater experiences
of positive emotion within you. Consider
another study, though, that looked at a
bunch of bus drivers, and they tracked
their happiness over time, twice a day for
two weeks, and what it came down to in
this study was whether these bus drivers
were
faking positive interactions with the
commuters or whether they were trying to
genuinely push themselves to have a
better experience in their job. So people
say "fake it 'til you make it," and if
you're just walking around faking smiles
and trying to convince yourself that, you
know, "I'm trying to be happy, so let's
just see what happens," it's not gonna do
it. It's genuinely pushing yourself to
experience positivity that then
increases happiness over time so the
more these bus driver said, "You know, I
made a genuine effort today to really
appreciate commuters on the bus and feel
positive emotion" ... those were the people
who were actually than experiencing
positive emotion and experiencing less
negative emotion throughout the
course of their work weeks. But the more
those bus driver said, "You know, I try to
put on a happy face while I'm driving
this bus around" ... that was actually
related to more negative emotion. So to
consolidate all of this stuff, the key
takeaway here is if you're looking to
increase positive emotions like
happiness, then you should take it upon
yourself to smile and mean it. Just
faking it until you make it is unlikely
to work, just like holding a pen like
this is unlikely to work. But push yourself.
In everyday interactions, find an
opportunity to smile.
Think about something that makes you
happy, and smile in a way where you
genuinely mean it. And over time, you might
find that this has actual boosts to your
well-being and life satisfaction.
