Scrolling through Instagram reels, I realised that some of the funniest videos are the ones where you can hear the laughter of the person behind the camera. It’s crazy how infectious laughter and smiling can be.
Have you ever been walking towards someone both with varying degrees of ‘resting b*tch face’, and then suddenly they smile at you? Faces are so beautifully transformed by that simple action that it is impossible not to return the grin.
Why is that?
Well, an Italian study in the late 80’s observing macaque monkeys uncovered something pretty fascinating. They found that certain brain cells behaved in exactly the same way when the monkey itself was making a movement, like picking up a peanut, to when they were watching another monkey do the same.
In simplified terms, those brain cells couldn’t tell the difference between actually doing something and watching it done. Scientists named the cells ‘mirror neurons’. Humans use them a lot with emotions. You might have been watching a sad film or a character who is confused about something and suddenly realised your own face is contorted with sadness or confusion too. Humans mirror emotions in an attempt to empathise; we ‘try on’ the emotion by copying facial expressions – often without realising.
Similarly, studies have found that smiling is more prevalent in societies with high immigration diversity – societies comprised of people from a larger blend of backgrounds.
We use smiling as an equaliser.
It’s a way to communicate that crosses language and social boundaries, and shows you are friendly.
So, maybe that person in the street smiled at us as a way of simple communication or to be friendly, and we smiled back because we were unconsciously mirroring their emotions.
But did you also know that every time we smile, we set off an ’emotion loop’? This is a theory Darwin established in the 1870s. Essentially, his work set out that as well as showing our emotions, our facial expressions can also influence our emotions. In this case, the physical act of smiling sends endorphins to the brain, as a result we feel happy, so we smile… and so on.
And if someone sees you smiling, they may mirror your emotions by smiling back – setting off their own ‘smile loop’. Then if someone sees them smiling…etc etc.
As Spike Milligan said in his famous poem Smile:
‘I thought about that smile, then I realized its worth.
A single smile, just like mine could travel round the earth.’
The best bit of all this, is that by forcing the physical action of smiling on yourself – even just by using the same muscles, like holding a pencil between your teeth, when you are not feeling happy at all – you can kickstart your own smile loop and make yourself feel happier.
Try it! It works, I promise you. And if all else fails, scroll through some Instagram fail videos and listen to people laughing. I challenge you not to crack a smile then. It’s impossible. Why do you think all those old sitcoms added laughter tracks? They were hoping your mirror neurons would do their work.
Ruth x
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