Smiling
"Psychologists have found that even if you’re in bad mood, you can instantly lift your spirits by forcing yourself to smile." Numerous amounts of research studies have shown that making a facial expression, such as smiling, can produce effects on the body that are similar to those that result from the actual emotion, such as happiness. Paul Ekman and his colleagues have studied facial expressions of emotions and have linked specific emotions to the movement of specific facial muscles. Each basic emotion is associated with a distinctive facial expression. Sensory feedback from the expression contributes to the emotional feeling. Example: Smiling if you want to feel happy. Facial expressions have a large effect on self-reported anger and happiness which then affects your mood. Ekman has found that these expressions of emotion are universal and recognizable across widely divergent cultures.
Read more about this topic: Mood (psychology)
Famous quotes containing the word smiling:
“For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”
Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle
But you wanted to know why so much action took on so much life
And still managed to remain itself, aloof, smiling and courteous.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)