Adoree Durayappah

Ever noticed how there are basically two types of smiles: a genuine smile and a fake one?

This distinction has been of interest to researchers for quite sometime now. In fact, the genuine smile has a name. It’s called the “Duchenne smile,” named after the French physician Guillaume Duchenne, who studied the physiology of facial expressions in the nineteenth century.

The Duchenne smile involves both voluntary and involuntary contraction from two muscles: the zygomatic major (raising the corners of the mouth) and the orbicularis oculi (raising the cheeks and producing crow’s feet around the eyes).

A fake smile or, as I like to call it, a “Say Cheese” smile involves the contraction of just the zygomatic major since we cannot voluntarily contract the orbicularis oculi muscle.

This is interesting, but why is it so? What’s going on upstairs that creates these two different smiles?

Scientists have discovered that these two types of smiles are actually controlled by two completely different parts of our brain.

When a patient with damage to the motor cortex on the brain’s left hemisphere attempts to smile, the smile is asymmetrical, with the right side of the smile not moving as it should. However, when that same patient spontaneously laughs, the smile is normal with no asymmetry. This means that the genuine smile is controlled by some other part of the brain.

Now, when a patient with damage to the anterior cingulate (part of the limbic system) in the left hemisphere attempts to smile, there is no asymmetry. The smile is normal. However, when that same patient tries to smile spontaneously, the asymmetry appears.

Limbic System

Thus, the Say Cheese smile is controlled by the motor cortex while emotion-related movements, like the Duchenne smile, is controlled by the limbic system (the emotional center of the brain).

But, does it truly matter if your smile is contrived or authentic?

Apparently, it matters a great deal to your life satisfaction and quality of marriage.

Researchers Dacher Keltner and LeeAnne Harker from the University of California, Berkeley analyzed the smiles in 141 photos from the 1960 Mills College yearbook. They divided the photos by Duchenne smiles, Say Cheese smiles, and the non-smilers.

The researchers followed up with these women at age 27, 43, and 52 and asked them questions about their life satisfaction and status of their marriage. They found that the Duchenne smile predicted positive outcomes in marriage and well-being up to 30 years later.

So remember, a genuine smile will probably make you happier than you think.

And as for me…

Well, in the words of the brilliant Will Ferrell, who played Buddy in the holiday movie Elf:

I just like to smile! Smiling’s my favorite.

References:
Damasio, A. (2006). Descartes’ Error. Vintage (Rand).

Harker, L. and Keltner, D. (2001). Expressions of positive emotion in women’s college yearbook pictures and their relationship to personality and life outcomes across adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(1):112-124.

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Will more money make you happier? Well, that depends on if you are paid hourly or by salary according to a new study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Researchers from the University of Toronto and Stanford University have found that income was more strongly associated with happiness for individuals paid by the hour than by salary.

Sanford E. DeVoe from the University of Toronto and Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford University argue that the influence of organizational practices, such as being paid by the hour, affects the strength of the relationship between income and happiness.

In the first two studies the researchers used survey data from a nationally representative sample from the United States to analyze respondents’ income, hourly status, and overall happiness. They found that income was uncorrelated with happiness for salaried employees but significantly correlated with happiness for employees paid hourly.

In the third study, DeVoe and Pfeffer used longitudinal data from a nationally representative survey of British employees to see if the relationship between income and happiness varied by hourly status when all other individual differences are held constant. The results indicated that changes in income are more strongly associated with changes in well-being when people are paid hourly.

In the last study, the researcher experimentally manipulated the saliency of an individual’s hourly wage rate to see if this influenced the strength of the relationship between income and happiness. Participants were randomly assigned to the control condition (where they self-rated their well-being) or the “calculate hourly” condition (where they were asked to calculate their hourly wage from their yearly earnings and total hours worked and then self-rated their well-being). This study indicates that the salience of someone’s hourly wage rate caused non-hourly paid participants to exhibit a stronger connection between income and happiness.

Past research has indicated that when evaluating one’s subjective well-being, salient information can influence the evaluation. This information can either be temporarily or chronically available. DeVoe and Pfeffer suggest that being paid by the hour promotes a chronic economic evaluation of time, making this information salient to an individual’s evaluation of his/her happiness.

It would seem that money influences our happiness especially when it is chronically salient. But, as the comedian Jackie Mason said, “Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is…Fortunately, I love money.”

DeVoe et al. When Is Happiness About How Much You Earn? The Effect of Hourly Payment on the Money–Happiness Connection. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2009; 35 (12)

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