Lessons for Living
Smiles and Happiness

Look at the photographs in a high school yearbook, and you can easily identify these two types of smiles. One is genuine and one is pretend, and a genuine smile has been found to predict a person's level of happiness in later life.

A genuine smile is called a "Duchenne Smile" and is named after the French neurologist who identified it. This smile is characterized by the corners of the mouth turning up while the corners of the eyes crinkle into crow's feet. A practiced smile only involves the mouth.

Psychological researchers coded all of the photographs in a 1960's women's college yearbook and found that half of those smiling had a Duchenne smile. All of the students were subsequently interviewed at ages 26, 43, and 52 regarding the states of their marriages and their satisfaction with life. It was found that the women with a genuine smile in 1960 consistently got married, stayed married, and reported a higher sense of personal well-being than the women who given had a polite, half-hearted smile.

It appears, for women at least, that having a genuine smile predicts happiness.

For women and men, psychologist Paul Ekman has found that being able to produce a Duchenne Smile can bring about a sense of happiness. Using measures of brain wave activity, Ekman discovered that a spontaneous, authentic smile was accompanied by increased activity in an area of the brain known to be the seat of positive emotions. He also found that if a person intentionally produces an eye-crinkling smile then these same pleasure centers are activated, although not as intensely as with the spontaneous smile.