Tag Archives: smile

A fascinating experiment: can smiling really reduce stress?

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Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The following article by the late Christopher Peterson Ph. D revisits a topic I have touched on in a previous Happiness Experiment blog post: the importance of smiling. Learning how to smile more was the first Happiness Experiment I wrote about when I began the blog last year and I think it is a topic worth looking at again as Dr Peterson’s article suggests.  If something as simple as smile can help us to recover from stress I think it is an experiment worth trying.  Take a look at this short Happiness Experiment No 1 video and read the article and decide for yourself whether you will give it a go.

 

Smiling and Stress

Smiling speeds recovery when a stressful experience is over.
Published on September 13, 2012 by Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. in The Good Life
Christopher Peterson

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. — Thich Nhat Hanh

An interesting research report, by Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman, will soon be published inPsychological Science. Their research speaks directly to well-being, psychological and physical, and the link between these two spheres. The researchers wondered about the effects of smiling on physiological recovery from stress.

The innovation of their research was that they deliberately manipulated whether participants were smiling or not — making this a true experiment — and further took steps to avoid “demanding” hypothesized responses from these participants*.

Kraft and Pressman (2012) studied 169 college students, telling them that their investigation concerned multi-tasking. Participants were hooked up to a monitor that assessed their heart rate in beats per minute throughout the entire experiment. Heart rate is a simple and reliable way to measure experienced stress — the higher the rate, the more stress someone is experiencing.

After a 10-minute acclimation period, participants were asked to spend two minutes doing a difficult task, using their non-dominant hand to trace a star-shaped design without going off a provided outline. Oh, and they could only see what they were doing while viewing a mirror image of their hand, which is to say a reversed image. Accuracy was emphasized, and participants were given false information about “average” performance: eight tracings in two minutes with fewer than 25 errors. In reality, participants could only manage two tracings and on average made more than 25 errors.

A five-minute recovery period ensued, followed by another stress-inducing task, submerging one’s hand in ice water for one minute, a painful but not harmful experience. Then there was another five-minute recovery period.

 

Are you following? Here comes the gist of the experiment. During the stress tasks (not the recovery periods), participants were assigned to different conditions. Those in the neutral expression control group were asked to hold the ends of chopsticks gently in their mouth while relaxing their face. Those in the standard smiling group did the same while using theirzygomaticus major muscles**, those involved in raising the corners of the mouth, thereby producing a facial smile. Those in the Duchenne smiling group held chopsticks cross-wise in their mouths while using their zygomaticus major muscles as well as their orbicularis oculi muscles, those involved in closing the eyelids, thereby producing the full-faced smile known as a Duchenne smile. Duchenne smiles are often characterized as genuine ones, and they predict marital satisfaction as well as longevity, presumably because their frequent display is a marker of a happy and satisfied life (Abel & Kruger, 2010; Harker & Keltner, 2001). Participants were provided coaching and shown photo examples of how they should look in each condition. Their fidelity to the instructions was later checked by raters watching videotapes.

Half of the participants in each of the two smiling groups were explicitly told to smile, which is how the researchers controlled for demand characteristics. These participants were aware that they should be smiling, whereas other participants were simply told how to hold their faces.

The experiment had five conditions: (1) neutral expression; (2) standard smiling without awareness; (3) standard smiling with awareness; (4) Duchenne smiling without awareness; and (5) Duchenne smiling with awareness. Their heart rate was monitored throughout, and the crucial analyses looked at reductions in heart rate following the multiple tasks as a function of condition.

Results were straightforward and as expected. Regardless of their awareness, smiling participants recovered more quickly from stress than those with neutral expressions, and those displaying Duchenne smiles recovered somewhat more quickly than those displaying a standard smile.

So, smiling speeds recovery from stress. How? The research did not directly test possible biological mechanisms, but perhaps smiling influences blood flow in the brain, thereby undoing the effects of stress. In any event, let me draw out some of the implications.

Smile while you are stressed, genuinely if possible. But faking — i.e., smiling with just your mouth — may still be worth your effort. Doing so does not reduce stress in the moment, but it speeds recovery when a stressful experience is over. That said, Kraft and Pressman cautioned that their finding applies to recovery from short-term stress. The long-term display of emotions one is not really feeling may actually take a toll (Goldberg & Grandey, 2007).

I just talked to a writer for a fitness magazine, who had heard about this study and was writing a story on it. He asked if smiling during a workout made it easier. My opinion was “Not exactly.” For starters, exercise raises one’s heartbeat, but I assume in a different way than the stressful tasks in Kraft and Pressman’s experiment. Much as I would like to believe that stress caused by multi-tasking constitutes aerobic exercise, I suspect it does not. And in any event, the research was about recovery from stress and not about the reduction of stress per se.

Still, smiling during exercise may make a workout more enjoyable, if only because it makes the smiling person more approachable by others. I have a strong opinion that workouts would be more enjoyable for most of us if these workouts were more social and not pursued in grim indifference to those sharing the same gym (Peterson & Xydis, 2011). Smiling opens doors, at gyms and elsewhere.

Late at night, when I am flipping through television shows, I sometimes come across an infomercial pushing some sort of exercise device or program. The people depicted are of course fit and attractive, but they also have a strange expression on their face, which I finally have identified. It is not exactly a smile. It is a display of smugness, as in “I am ripped and you are not,” which I find off-putting. I would be more inclined to purchase whatever is being urged on me if these folks were simply smiling.

I find it intriguing that Duchenne smiles can be deliberately created, which goes against their common interpretation as genuine and thus impossible to fake. However, I remember some years ago teaching a small seminar class in which I mentioned Duchenne smiles. I commented that they could not be faked. A student raised her hand. I acknowledged her, and she gave the whole class a wonderful Duchenne smile. I just stared back at her, speechless for a moment. Then I asked, “How did you do that? Are you faking?”

She smiled, again, radiantly, and said, “What makes you think I’m faking? I’m just smiling. I’m a theater major, by the way, and I have learned how to express emotions.”

What ensued was a fascinating discussion of method acting, and I think positive psychology, in its search for interventions that bolster well-being, could learn much from the strategies of Stanislavski, Strasberg, and others.

Cheers.

* What are called demand characteristics can plague studies of sentient human beings, who may try to figure out what is expected of them in an investigation and then act accordingly, confirming the research hypothesis for irrelevant reasons (Orne, 1962). Imagine a psychology laboratory to which potential participants report for a study. As participants wait in the hallway for the study to begin, they see a bulletin board on which are posted descriptions of past studies conducted by those who run the laboratory. Is it far-fetched to suppose that some potential participants read these descriptions, think about them, and once the study begins recognize the research paradigm as one intended to investigate the effects of X on Y? Is it far-fetched to think that the behavior of these participants is thereby influenced?

** According to Wikipedia, variations in the structure of these muscles produce dimples. Mario Lopez should be grateful for his zygomaticus major muscles, which have made him a celebrity.

References

Abel, E. L., & Kruger, M. L. (2010). Smile intensity in photographs predicts longevity. Psychological Science, 21 , 542–544.

Goldberg, L. S., & Grandey, A. A. (2007). Display rules versus display autonomy: Emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and task performance in a call center simulation. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12, 301-318.

Harker, L. A., & Keltner, D. (2001). Expressions of positive emotion in women’s college yearbook pictures and their relationship to personalityand life outcomes across adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80 , 112–124.

Kraft, Tara L., & Pressman, Sarah D. (2012). Grin and bear it: The influence of manipulated facial expression on the stress response.Psychological Science.

Orne, Martin T. (1962). On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications. American Psychologist, 17, 776–783.

Peterson, C., & Xydis, K. (2011). Positive psychology for health and fitness professionals. Tucson, AZ: DSWFitness.

Article originally published on September 13, 2012 by Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. in The Good Life
Posted by Shona Lockhart, 27th March 2013

 

20 ways to get happy

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This article from Time Magazine summarizes 20 great happiness experiments you could try out:

Health and Happiness

Happiness is difficult to define and even harder to measure. We experience it as a combination of elements, in the same way that one wheel or spring inside a watch doesn’t keep time — it is a result of the synchronicity of the whole. As a relative state, happiness is what psychologists call our “subjective well-being” and, fortunately for us, it is a state that we can actively change for the better. Here are 20 ways to start:

Full List

MARTIN HARVEY / CORBIS

1. Count Your Blessings

Count your blessings — but not everyday. Sonja Lyubomirsky, an experimental psychologist at UC Riverside, found that people who once a week wrote down five things they were grateful for were happier than those who did it three times a week. “It’s an issue of timing or frequency,” says Lyubomirsky, “When people do anything too often it loses the freshness and meaning. You need to have optimal timing.” Lyubomirsky added that it has to feel right. She tried to count her blessings and hated it. “I found it hokey. It didn’t work for me. Just like a diet program, what you do has to fit your lifestyle, personality and goals.” In essence, gratitude might not be for everyone. But if it is, another exercise is to think of a person who has been kind to you that you’ve wanted to thank — a teacher, mentor or parent — and write a letter, once a week to different individuals over two months. You don’t even have to send it to feel happier.

BROOKE FASANI / CORBIS
Whether regarded as an evolutionary accident that piggybacked on language or as the gateway to our emotions, music activates parts of the brain that can trigger happiness, releasing endorphins similar to the ways that sex and food do. Music can also relax the body, sometimes into sleep as it stimulates the brain’s release of melatonin. A study of older adults who listened to their choice of music during outpatient eye surgery showed that they had significantly lower heart rates and blood pressure, and their hearts did not work as hard as those who underwent surgery without music. A second study, of patients undergoing colonoscopy, showed that listening to their selection of music reduced their anxiety levels and lessened the dosage required for sedation.
CORBIS
It’s no secret that a roll in the hay, and all that leads up to it, feels good. Endorphins are the neurotransmitters in your brain that reduce pain and, in the absence of pain, can induce euphoria. A rush of such chemicals might seem like a temporary solution to a dreary day, but there are added benefits, not the least of which is expressing affection and strengthening the bonds of a relationship. Oxytocin is released by the pituitary gland upon orgasm; often referred to as the “hormone of love” or the “cuddle chemical,” it is associated with feelings of bonding and trust, and can even reduce stress.
CORBIS
Survey after survey shows that people with strong religious faith — of any religion or denomination — are happier than those who are irreligious. David Myers, a social psychologist at Michigan’s Hope College, says that faith provides social support, a sense of purpose and a reason to focus beyond the self, all of which help root people in their communities. That seems reason enough to get more involved at the local church, temple or mosque. For the more inwardly focused, deep breathing during meditation and prayer can slow down the body and reduce stress, anxiety and physical tension to allow better emotions and energy to come forward.
PATRIK GIARDINO / CORBIS
We’ve all heard about a “runner’s high,” but there are plenty of other ways to achieve that feeling. Dance. Play a sport. Work out as hard as you can. Take a walk so your stress will take a hike. Moving your body releases endorphins, the quintessential feel-good chemicals found in your brain. How endorphin release is triggered by exercise is somewhat of a controversial science because researchers don’t know if it is caused by the positive emotion felt upon meeting a physical challenge or from the exertion itself. Either way, physical motion can provide a rush of good energy that can lift a mood, be it anxiety or mild depression, and it’s a good way to keep healthy.
laugh
MICHAEL PRINCE / CORBIS
Be it a slew of good jokes, a slapstick comedy or laughing yoga, find something to give you a good hearty laugh that brings tears to the eyes or a giggle fit that makes the sides of your body ache. People are 30 times more likely to laugh in groups than alone and, not surprisingly, laughter is associated with helping to develop person-to-person connections through a feedback loop characterized by laughter, social bonding and more laughter. Laughter, like so many other endorphin-triggers, helps to reduce certain stress hormones and, while it might be contagious, it strengthens your immune system rather than weakening it.
IMAGE SOURCE / CORBIS
Hold a door open for someone at the bank, give someone directions if they look lost or make a point to compliment three people on your way to work. Small or big, directed at friends or strangers, random acts of kindness make the person performing the kind act happier when they’re grouped together, according to Sonja Lyubomirsky, an experimental psychologist at UC Riverside. Doing a considerate thing for another person five times in one day made the doer happier than if they had spread out those five acts over one week. Lyubomirsky explains that because we all perform acts of kindness naturally, it seems to please us more when we’re more conscious of it. There are social rewards, too, when people respond positively.
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ROY MCMAHON / CORBIS
Midas might have been an unhappy guy, but that’s probably because he didn’t know any other kings who could also turn things into gold. Money as an absolute may not make you a happier person but making more money than others in your age group does, according to a sociological study done in 2005 by researchers at Pennsylvania State University. But keeping up with the Joneses isn’t the only way that money brings happiness. Saving it for retirement or a rainy day brings together a variety of positive emotions that can lead to happiness, such as anticipation and expectation, a sense of delayed gratification and reward.
BARRY LEWIS / CORBIS

Happiness can lead to success, rather than just the other way around. Happy individuals are predisposed to seek out new opportunities and set new goals. After reviewing data of 225 studies gathered from more than 275,000 individuals, a team of psychologists concluded that while previous research assumed that happiness stemmed from success and accomplishment, happiness is often a result of positive emotions. Success is the result of many factors, including physical health, intelligence, family and expertise.

SIMON MARCUS / CORBIS
Whether it’s getting comfy with a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, dancing at a Japanese Obon festival or scarfing down a hot dog at Coney Island, embrace your culture. Appreciating one’s culture creates and strengthens bonds with others who share that culture and also allows one to identify and appreciate cultural difference. A recent study showed that adolescents of Mexican and Chinese ethnicity maintained feelings of happiness despite daily stress when they had a strong sense of cultural identity. In other research, psychologists found an association between stable cultural identity and overall positive emotion in African American and Native American communities.
memory
DENNIS GALANTE / CORBIS
Learn to scan your memory bank for your strengths, talents, passions, interests, practical coping skills, and earlier potential — whether it’s actualized or not. Scanning this memory bank and gleaning material that can be used to reinvent yourself to be happier is key, says Barbara Becker-Holstein, psychologist and author of Enchanted Self: A Positive Therapy. For example, someone who would like to be more altruistic can scan their past and know that they didn’t like Girl Scouts in elementary school. That crosses off being a PTA mother. But they might remember that as a child they enjoyed collecting soda bottles and giving the money to the local fire station where they knew the firefighters. That person might consider giving money and time to a local group where they can socialize with people rather than mailing in a check to a distant organization. “Looking at one’s personal style, tastes and interests as we look for ways to be happy today is very important,” says Becker-Holstein.

MATT KING / GETTY
Optimism is a learned skill and there are a variety of ways to acquire it, says psychologist Mary Ann Troiani, co-author of Spontaneous Optimism. Through her research, Troiani has come up with three things that you can do to enhance your sense of optimism. First, straighten out your body before your emotions by keeping a straight body posture, taking big steps and walking quickly with your shoulders back and your head up. “People who are pessimistic walk slowly with small steps and their head down,” she says. Second, change your tone of voice so that it is cheerful and full of energy. Third, use upbeat or happier words, such as “challenge” rather than “problem,” or think of “opportunities” rather than “losses.” “Positive thoughts and behavior have a positive impact on the brain’s biochemistry,” she says. “[They] boost your serotonin levels and signal that you’re happy. Your brain will catch up to you.” Troiani reminds us: it takes about 4 to 6 weeks to really change a habit.
KRISTY-ANNE GLUBISH / DESIGN PICS / CORBIS
Stop putting off seeing the aurora lights, warming up in the hot springs of Greenland or learning a new instrument — just do it. If you often do one thing that makes you happy, then try another. Psychologist Rich Walker of Winston-Salem State University looked at 30,000 event memories and over 500 diaries, ranging from durations of 3 months to 4 years, and says that people who engage in a variety of experiences are more likely to retain positive emotions and minimize negative ones than people who have fewer experiences. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, studies her broaden-and-build hypothesis of positive emotion. Her research suggests that the optimal ratio of positive to negative emotion in humans is above 3 to 1 and below 11 to 1. Walker has observed that once the ratio of positive to negative events hit 1 to 1, it opens the door to potential disorders, such as anxiety and depression.
ERIN RYAN / ZEFA / CORBIS
Talking about the good and bad things that happen can lead to happiness — even if it is from opposite ends of the phone line. In a controlled lab experiment, psychologist Rich Walker of Winston-Salem State University found that the reasons are two-fold: people tend to emphasize positive emotions and mitigate negative ones when telling a story, since memory’s natural bias is to keep tabs on the good stuff and gradually lose the emotional intensity of a bad event; and the process of storytelling can affect how one feels about what happened even up to a week later. In other words, talking about a negative experience made the emotional intensity of that memory fade faster than if the event had not been recounted. Walker says that storytelling works best when there is a lot of audience diversity — it helps to tell the story many times to a variety of people.
CHRISTOPH WILHELM / DESIGN PICS / CORBIS15. Balance Work and Home
The grin of our society is blue-toothed. With BlackBerrys and corporate email at home, we are tethered to technology unlike any previous generation. This newfound flexibility between our work and private lives works for some people but is problematic for others. In 2003, Michigan State University researchers found that those who establish boundaries between work and home are more connected to their families and have less conflict than those who integrate the two. The researchers divided people into what they call integrators and separators and suggested that knowing the appropriate boundaries between work and home can have an impact and improve happiness.
Last year, the first world map of happiness was produced, and Denmark came out on top. For more than 30 years, the nation has ranked first in European satisfaction surveys. Researchers in the British Medical Journal tried to understand why the Danes felt more satisfied than the Swedes or Finns, who share similar aspects of culture, and came up with two plausible explanations: the lasting impact of the Danes’ victory in the 1992 European Football Championship has kept them in a state of euphoria since; and the nation, while satisfied, has shown low expectations for the coming year, unlike the Greeks and the Italians who rank low on satisfaction. While there were other reasons that contributed to the satisfaction of the Danes, one thing is clear: the higher one’s expectations, the further they fall.SIMON JARRATT / CORBIS
Society is plagued by time bankruptcy. But what if people asserted more control over their time to optimize their use of it? “Maybe you need to burn bridges, discard habits or situations that waste time and avoid emotional vampires,” says Mary Ann Troiani, co-author of Spontaneous Optimism. “It’s like house-cleaning at that point.” Psychologists will say prioritize, set realistic daily goals that fit into the bigger picture and some time might be recovered. Troiani usually asks one pointed question to shock her clients out of their rut: How would you feel in two or three years if you still feel this way? “People sit there like a deer in headlights,” she says. Her response: picture and imagine what you want to feel like. Maybe set aside two nights in your calendar to focus on those things that you’d like to spend more time on. Or as she puts it: cut the chase.
BEATHAN / CORBIS18. Visualize Happiness
We are unique creatures in that we can mentally simulate situations by remembering the past and visualizing the future. We can also play a hand at perhaps creating the future — at least in terms of preparing our emotional state for what may come. It’s a valuable tool and one that can lead to happiness when applied to specific goals. There is much research behind visualization and emotional changes, as it has been shown that positive thoughts have an impact on the brain’s biochemistry. Many psychologists ask people to imagine or picture what they would like in their life, creating a mental state that makes the person think that it is achievable. “If you experience that visualization with your eyes closed, your mind doesn’t know if it’s real or unreal,” says Mary Ann Troiani, co-author of Spontaneous Optimism.“Neuropsychological ways makes them feel as though they have it and tricks the mind into thinking they have [what they are visualizing] now. It makes them more confident about it.”
SEBASTIAN PFUETZE / ZEFA / CORBIS
Go ahead. It won’t hurt you. It might actually make you happier, too. Based on the psychology that a person feels whatever emotion they are acting at the moment, you will probably feel better if you smile. To avoid what is called cognitive dissonance, in which our thoughts and actions don’t match up, our minds react to the change in our facial expression to bring our beliefs in line with our behavior. And, like laughter, it’s contagious. If you smile, chances are that those around you will too.
YORAY LIBERMAN / GETTY
Since there may be no point in marrying rich (see previous), then marry happy. Research shows that depressed singles receive greater psychological benefit — from things such as intimacy and emotional closeness — from getting married than those who are not depressed. And for the married population, first of all, congratulations: people in committed relationships have been shown to be happier than those who aren’t, despite how satisfying their marriages actually are. Research done by an economist at the University of Warwick suggests that if you’re married to someone who is happy, then you are happy as well. The research concludes that happiness, like material things in a marriage, is shared. Awww…

 

Article from Time Magazine – Best List Series.

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 28th October 2012