How Smiling Helps You, Even if it's Fake

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People is the classic on getting along well with others. Carnegie listed six ways to make people like you. Number two on the list is to smile.

Research supports Carnegie’s “smiling principle”. Smiling makes you appear more attractive to others and by smiling we influence others to smile too. People judge things more positively while smiling, so our own smile can set off a chain reaction causing more positive encounters.

But there is more to it than just being attractive and judging things more positively. Smiling also changes our physiology.

When we smile, we release endorphins, which travel down our spine sending feel good hormones throughout the rest of our body, which can reduce the symptoms of emotional and physical pain.

The best bit, you can fake it and receive all the positive benefits of the real thing.

One study showed that smiling helps lower heart rate and reduce stress levels when completing stressful tasks, even when forced and unnatural.  Similarly, other researchers have shown that by limiting negative expressions or frowning, helps reduce negative feelings or sadness. In one study,  participants were given a Botox injection to prevent frowning. They reported significantly less negative mood than those who didn’t receive the treatment.

There is no doubt smiling is a superpower we all have at our disposal but most of us aren’t smiling near enough.  In his TED Talk, “The Hidden Power of Smiling”, Ron Gutman explains that on average, children smile approximately four hundred times a day, whereas only one-third of adults smile more than twenty times a day.

Make smiling part of your daily rituals. Do things that make you smile. Smile strategically. Smile when you’re happy. Smile when you’re sad. Smile at a stranger. Better still, laugh when you smile and all the effects will be amplified.

In the wise words of Douglas Horton "Smile, it's free therapy".