Can you Tell the Difference between a Genuine Healthy Smile and a Fake One?

Do "smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend" as that old tune tells us? We have always known that, of course; but now, there's science that proves it. The said science comes from the Bangor University in the UK. The study took up something like three dozen subjects and they set them on the task of playing a strange kind of game. Each one of the subjects had to challenge opponents in a game that offered them a chance of winning money. The people they won the money from would offer them a healthy smile or a full but not entirely sincere smile. The researchers who designed the whole scene made it so that people were given a full healthy smile when they won very little money and an insincere smile when they won a lot. These study subjects needed to pick partners from among the people they won money from for the next stage of the game.

The researchers found that study subjects always unconsciously picked people to call their partners, who had offered them a proper healthy smile. They didn't seem to think much of how they had won a lot of money with people who had offered them an insincere smile. It didn't seem to matter to them that those who offered them an insincere smile happened to be more profitable people to play with.

So how do people tell when a smile isn't completely sincere? And more to the point, how do they get it right every time? Scientists seem to feel that laugh lines are where all the clues lie. These light wrinkles that appear around the corners of the eyes when we smile, usually only come into action when we're in the process of putting a healthy smile that is genuine. The muscles that surround the eyes that produce those wrinkles don't naturally spring into action for staged smiles.

That isn't the only clue that you unconsciously take in. The bit of skin above your eyelids, if you would notice them in a person with a genuine smile, tend to go down a bit. In a social smile, they don't. There are very few people who can actually pull off a smile that can manipulate those parts of the eyelids. You have to be an Oscar-winner to do that.

If you happen to be someone who has a party smile that's just for the benefit of the people around you, just remember - while those aren't as good as a genuine smile or genuine laughter, even these can be better for you than sullenness. While other people may be able to tell the difference between a genuine smile and a fake one, your heart can't. As far as your heart is concerned, a fake smile and fake laughter are happiness too. Happiness that can make it healthy.