The latest research indicates that there’s some hard science behind the old adage: Smile and the world smiles with you.
It’s a quick and effective hack. If you want a rapid change to your mood or mindset, altering your physical actions will quickly alter your state of mind. But just how robust is the science behind this idea? This has been one of the most contentious topics in social psychology, with many landmark studies supposedly backing up this idea failed to replicate.
Remember Professor Amy Cuddy and Power Posing? Cuddy, along with her co-authors published a paper claiming to show that adopting a powerful stance, not only made you feel more powerful, but altered your neuro-hormonal balance in line with this feeling. The idea was taken up with a vengeance by politicians and business leaders alike. Her Ted Talk on the topic was viewed over 70 million times.
However, critics started to point out that the findings had consistently failed to replicate. And in 2015, the paper’s co-author Dana Carney expressed concerns about the robustness of the power posing findings and distanced herself from the conclusions drawn in the study.
Of course, there are plenty of self-reported benefits of standing in a confident way. And absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
But what of smiling? The idea that changing our facial expression changes our mood, is known as the facial-feedback hypothesis. Unlike power posing you can do it where and when you chose without the risk of looking ridiculous. However, like power posing, some of the best-known studies in support of the hypothesis have had issues of their own when it comes to replicability.
One of the most famous studies attempted to show that holding a pen or pencil in your mouth to simulate a smile can increase feelings of happiness, but the study’s reliability was questioned due to small sample sizes, inconsistent replication results and the fact that people might have acted happier just because they guessed the study was trying to make them feel happy.
Moreover, a number of critics questioned whether forcing back your lips with a pen to reveal your teeth, really does mimic what happens to the face when you smile. In reality, a smile is created by the complex interplay of many small facial muscles.
Enter stage Themis Nikolas Efthimiou and colleagues from the University of Essex who sought to settle this one once and for all.
Working with a sample of 58 participants, they applied electrical currents to their zygomaticus major muscles (responsible for smiling) and depressor anguli oris muscles (associated with frowning). The findings revealed that stimulation of the smile muscles led to increased positive emotions, while activation of the frown muscles resulted in heightened negative emotions. These results support the idea that facial muscle activity can influence emotional states.
The facial feedback hypothesis works. It’s a quick and effective hack to manage your mood or mindset when you need it. At Threshold we train business leaders in the art of resilience and grace under pressure. We often find the simplest tools and techniques are the most powerful. Not only do they enable individual business leaders to be more effective, but by projecting confidence and a sense of calm and optimism, these leaders are better able to inspire those around them.
