One wonders whether it is only a coincidence that those of us who socialize the most tend to get less depressed. We have seen how socializing is a great activator of smiling -- perhaps smiling is doing more than we think. Do children suffer less often from depression because they spend more time playing and smiling? It is so easy to forget that your face is always speaking to you: 24/7, your brain is keeping track of how many smiles you created with your face. Your smile scorecard is not something you are consciously aware of, but your unconscious has intimate knowledge of it.

I believe that smiling more benefits you directly -- even without its social benefits. You go to the gym to strengthen your muscles. Why not go to the smiling gym to strengthen your positive emotions?

One study found that women who had smiled the most in their college yearbook photos had happier lives, happier marriages, and fewer personal setbacks in the following 30 years. Another study finds a correlation between how big a smile you made for a baseball card photo and how long you will live. Those baseball players who had the broadest smiles lived, on average, seven years longer than those who smiled the least.

How could smiling lead to happier marriages and longer lives? The key is probably the reduction of stress that your body and mind feel. Smiling helps generate positive happy emotions within you, and this leads to a decrease in the stress-induced hormones that negatively affect your physical and mental health. Now, of course, there is only a correlation between smiling and a happy life -- it certainly doesn't prove that smiling will make your marriage better or lengthen your life. Perhaps those who smiled most were just innately happier people or smiled more because life was already treating them well in college, predicting more good things to come. Studies such as these can't show what causes what. Waves are correlated with beaches, but do beaches cause waves or waves bring beaches?

But if one assumes that those who smile more will be happier, what happens to those who smile less? Shouldn't those who developed difficulty smiling as adults suffer more from depression, all other things being equal? Nature has done the experiment if one knows where to look. To probe for cause and effect, doctors studied what happened to patients who, because of facial nerve damage, were unable to move their faces normally. The facial nerve is commonly damaged in adult life by a condition known as Bell's palsy. There are three major parts of the facial nerve, so it is possible to lose the ability to frown but be able to smile, or vice versa. These researchers asked their patients to raise their eyebrows, squint, smile, and pucker their mouths to assess the extent of their facial disability. Their hypothesis was that the inability to smile would increase one's risk of depression.

The results showed that a general impairment in moving one's face was not associated with depression. However, patients who specifically lacked the ability to smile were much more likely to become depressed, and their depression was more severe. There are several possible explanations. First, smiling occurs in social situations and helps facilitate positive emotions and relationships with others. Those individuals who find themselves unable to smile may experience more social isolation, leading to more depressive symptoms from loneliness. This could be a strong negative feedback loop. Second, smiling, by activation of the smile muscle, would initiate a feedback loop to the brain, activating our happy part of the brain, contributing to a more positive mood and more smiling. Those with impaired smiling would have the positive feedback interrupted and more consistent weight on the side of depression. I believe the second explanation is more important, but there is no evidence to help us decide.





This post is excerpted from The Face of Emotion.