A smile does not mean that a person is happy

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Many consider a smile that lifts the cheeks and collects wrinkles around eyes, sincerely But a new study from Carnegie Mellon University questions that this happy facial expression necessarily reflects a person's real feelings.

In fact, those “smiling eyes” or Duchenne smiles are related to the intensity of the smile, and do not serve as an indicator of whether a person is happy or not. Such data is reported by Jeffrey Girard, the author of the study.

Scientists recruited 136 volunteers who agreed to record facial expressions as they performed laboratory tasks designed to cause them joy, embarrassment, fear or physical pain. After each task, the volunteers rated how much they felt different emotions.

Finally, the team filmed the smiles that appeared during these tasks and showed them to other participants, who tried to guess how much positive emotion they felt. volunteers while smiling.

While Duchenne smiles accounted for 90% of those that occurred when positive emotions were reported, they also accounted for 80% of smiles that occurred when no positive emotions were reported. Thus, the conclusion that a Duchenne smile is correlated with positive emotions is often wrong.