The smile experiment

Have you heard of the smile/pencil experiment? (I’m sure that’s not the official title)

When I was in school, my comms/psych related class had us “replicate” this experiment where you put a pencil or pen in your mouth and bite down. The action activates the same muscles you use to smile. The experiment was supposed to prove that the act of smiling itself made you happier.

As I bit down on my pen and “smiled”, I did feel a little jolt of joy. But was it because I was smiling or because the whole class had a pen in their mouth and it was kind of a silly experiment?

In the moment, I didn’t give it much thought. Like most things I learned at my university, I just sort of assumed it was accurate. (Not to say that I didn’t ever question what I was taught or disagree here and there, if you know me, you know I ask a lot of questions…). But in general, I was feeling a little happier after engaging those smile muscles, so for a long time that was what I accepted as truth.

Recently I learned the study has never been replicated since its inception. Scientists have long tried to replicate the original study, but they’ve all failed to do so. There is some research that says smiling makes you happier, but only under certain conditions.

It’s possible that with more data, we’ll one day see a conclusion to this question…But who knows what fallacies we will uncover ten years after that, or 100 years after that.

Maybe it’s not about your facial expression at all, but rather, the type of pencil you put in your mouth…Like it’s some ancient magic that only works if it’s made out of the wood of a tall oak tree that housed a wise owl and her family for three generations before it was savagely cut down to make pencils…

In the meantime, I can’t help but wonder if we should even spend resources studying this. Of course, it would be great if we found an easy and simple way to make ourselves instantly happier, but that just seems counter to what life’s lessons have always taught us.

The basic things that make us happy are the same as what has made us happy for centuries. We need meaning, connection, purpose, novelty, love, and laughter to be happy. I don’t think you can ask a heartbroken person to smile and find that they suddenly feel happier.

In the 19th century, old photographs depicted what looked like mainly many unsmiling, serious faces. This isn’t because they didn’t have enough meaning, connection, love, etc. (Ok, maybe for some it did, especially women and minorities, but you get what I’m saying).

The real reason people were such serious Sally’s is because taking the photos took a very long time. Some exposures could take up to 45 minutes. That’s a long time to hold a smile.

Except for this one gal. She inspired this post. Look at her. Her smile is so familiar. So genuine. Like the article says, it looks like a present day teen donned some traditional garb, slapped some filters on it, and voila, Instagram post.

There’s one thing I know for sure. It’s hard to feel anything but happy when you see a Duchenne smile.