More than a hundred studies have been published on the topic. In , social psychologist Fritz Strack published a study that seemed to confirm that facial feedback was real. The researchers asked participants to do more or less what I asked you to do earlier: hold a pen in their mouths in a position that forced them either to bare their teeth in a facsimile of a smile or to purse their lips around the pen.
And so the finding made its way into psychology textbooks and countless news headlines. Decades of corroboration followed, as researchers published other experiments that also showed support for the facial feedback hypothesis. Those 17 studies, coordinated by Dutch psychologist E. Wagenmakers, repeated the original study as closely as possible to see if its result held up, with just a few changes. They found a new set of cartoons and pre-tested them to check they were about as funny as the old set.
Past experiments may be unreliable because they relied on small sample sizes , buried boring or inconclusive results , or used statistical practices that make chance findings look like meaningful signals in what is really random noise. The result has been a morass of uncertainty: Which findings will hold up?
Wagenmakers and his team are just one of the many collaborations hoping to reshape psychology in the image of more established sciences like physics and genetics, where huge international consortia are already commonplace. Others — like the ManyBabies Consortium, which conducts infant research — concentrate on a niche.
A cross six multi-lab replication projects, each trying to replicate multiple studies, only 47 percent of the original results were successfully replicated. The failed attempt to replicate the pen study is in good company. When psychology tries to solve its replication crisis, it can sometimes create a crisis of a different kind, opening up a knowledge vacuum where an apparently reliable finding had previously stood. We should make a conscious effort not to take smiles from our loved ones for granted, and to keep in mind that across the globe a smile can mean so much more than a simple facial movement.
It turns out there's solid evidence that smiling can do us a world of good. I tried smiling when I tensed up in traffic yesterday, and again during a rigorous workout and then today when I woke up with a headache. But I have to admit, instantly I was calmer, less upset and, maybe just ever so slightly for a second, smiling made me feel happy.
Want more tips like these? Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. If we can trick the brain into perceiving stimuli as 'happy,' then we can potentially use this mechanism to help boost mental health," Marmolejo-Ramos said. Research from New York-based neurologist Dr. Isha Gupta also found that the mere act of smiling can increase levels of hormones like dopamine and serotonin in the body.
Serotonin release is associated with reduced stress. Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression and aggression," Gupta previously told NBC News.
Standing tall with shoulders back makes us look confident, plus it makes us feel more confident. Training the body to position itself the way you want to think and feel about yourself adjusts your thoughts and feelings to the way you want them to be. Making body adjustments—pulling your shoulders back, standing or sitting up straight, walking in a more expansive way—can pull you out of self-doubt, disappointment or dread and any other self-defeating emotion.
The reason it works is because of the mind-body connection. The cells of your body constantly eavesdrop on your thoughts from the wings of your mind. As you focus on the negative feeling, you might not even realize that you hunch your head or slump when you walk. This body posture not only reflects how you feel but also contributes to how you feel, which makes you feel even worse and come across in a negative way. The same is true with smiling.
An earlier study by Michael Lewis and his research team at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that when people whose ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic Botox injections, they are happier than people who can frown.
The researchers administered an anxiety and depression questionnaire to 25 females, half of whom had received frown-inhibiting Botox injections.
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