They are not all the same.We do not respond as quickly to a polite and polite smile as to a sincere smile, according to a study from Bangor University (UK) published in the journal Psychological Science. When someone smiles frankly, spontaneously, we can identify it faster than when someone who arches their lips does so solely out of commitment or courtesy. In addition, electrical sensors made it possible to detect thatcertain muscles in the mouths of those who observe them react to a sincere smile and remain impassive when the smile is not authentic. And the authors attribute it to the fact that it supposes a social reward, which favors interactions, so learning to anticipate them when the first gestures appear on the face can be a positive and critical social skill for the human being.
To leave a mark.Arching your lips to show off an ear-to-ear smile can help to be remembered. This is what emerges from a study carried out by scientists from the Center for Cognitive Neurosciences at Duke University (USA). In their experiments, they asked a group of volunteers to look at pictures of smiling people and serious people, followed by their first names. Images of the subjects’ brains revealed that the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus – the seat of memory – showed more activity when they learned and remembered the names of the subjects who smiled. Our mirror neurons “want us to remember people who have been kind to us, in case we need to interact with them in the future,” suggests Takashi Tsukiura, a co-author of the work, in the journalNeuropsychologia.
Sometimes they rejuvenate.Professor Theo Gevers of the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues have created an extensive “database of smiles” on the Internet that has enabled them to find out that when we smile frankly we appear to be a different age. Specifically, people over the age of 40 appear younger when they smile. On the contrary, below forty, a smile can make us appear older, so that to look young, neutral gestures that do not express emotions are preferable.
They influence social status.A work carried out by the University of Seville and published inJournal of Oral Rehabilitationrevealed that the smiles of the most influential people in the world, chosen by the magazineTimebetween 2006 and 2010, they share certain characteristics, such as thatthe upper gingiva is not exposed more than 1 or 2 millimeters, the exposure of the lower ones should be less than that of the upper ones and the upper lip should be slightly more prominent than the lower one.
