by cheri block
I once had a student accuse me of smiling too much. I told her I was advertising my father and brother’s dental practice. And smiled.
This morning, I am vindicated.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the intensity of a person’s smile “can help predict life satisfaction over time and even longevity.” The article also makes the point that the smile must be a genuine full smile, not one of those polite social smiles that you experience in an interview or a deposition or a medical appointment.
This article validated some of my core beliefs about smiling, especially ones I hold about the French and about students, professors, and employees who attend and work at Stanford University.
All of my life, I have smiled a big smile, naturally. When people look at me, I smile. Why yesterday, even sitting in Dr. Chen’s dental chair, readying myself for my first root canal and in some considerable pain, I smiled when she introduced herself. A big grand white smile, a dazzling smile.
While traveling in Paris (and France in general), I observed that the French usually do not smile back. They respond to an American smile in a very superior type of All-Knowing, as if God himself were French. My big friendly happy-go-lucky full-lipped and toothy smile translated to those willowy neurotic women and very cool Playboy men that hey!! What an American, look at that silly grin. Her IQ and sensibility, her culture and pedigree, must be like, well, those Eastern Europeans in Prague. Or worse, like a farmer in Nebraska. Or worse, like a Republican. OMG (a God named Henri).
I’ve been attending Stanford now for over three years. I’ve observed that most students do not smile back at me, especially those who frequent Coupa, an outdoor coffee house. Green Library is even worse. I round the corner, heading to the information desk and pass professors and students. I smile. They stare back at me either blankly or curiously, as if thinking who is she? Does she belong here among those of us engaged in such serious intellectual activity and thought that we need to be knee-deep in it (the thought) all the time? Is she from Fremont, that East Bay cultural wasteland that isn’t Palo Alto? or worse yet, Livermore, that cowboy hick town?
This results of the data crunched and presented in this article would indicate the following about the French and about the majority of students, staff, and professors at Stanford:
1. Smiling would improve their mental health.
2.Smiling improves heart rate and faster “physiological stress recovery.”
3.Smiling would help them feel less threatened.
There are some people, however, who thrive on sadness and stress.
My advice: smile and the whole world smiles with you! (except the French and the Cardinal).
Ouch – hope the root canal wasn’t too bad. My smile is one of my best features that I have used to my advantage my whole life. I enter a room with a smile and it tells everyone “this is going to be fun”. I am often told I have a commanding and self confident manner – the smile projects this. You are right. Keep smiling.
Yes, Linda. Your smile (and that laugh) indeed project confidence and fun.
OUCH, indeed. Not my experience as a Cardinal. But hey, things change over a 37 year period. I smiled a lot while there, saw no reason not to. Loved (almost) every minute of it. (You might have to find another library or coffee spot). As for the French, not any different when I was in Paris in ’83. Beautiful city, but very few smiles. Maybe they’ve all had root canals and couldn’t get over it. Never stop smiling, Mrs. Sabraw.
Oh bogard, I too love my time on the Farm. I am generalizing but I have noticed such seriousness in the library. What I find unusual is this: when I smile at people walking by me in the Green Library, often they do not smile back. That’s weird.
Grrr.
I knew this blogpost would annoy you.
Good job. What really annoys me is the smile police, i.e., people walking up to me and telling me to smile. Happens all the time. I seem to have one of those faces that triggers the “I must tell this guy to smile” reflex. Of course, nothing kills the any potential impulse to smile like being ordered to smile.
Smile! Be happy! A highly dubious correlation. Why does the former necessarily betoken the latter? Many smiles are effected in order to mask—and thus they evince—unhappiness, whereas when I’m at my happiest, I generally don’t sit there with a grin on my face. I can be perfectly merry and chipper while wearing a neutral expression. In fact, in my happiest moments, I’m usually absorbed in something, and this state tends to produce a reflective rather than a simpering mien.
Point well taken. Thank you. I do value your opinion. I hope you know that.
I don’t “know” anything of that sort. In the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary, however, I shall grant you the benefit of the doubt.
Smiling’s OK I suppose, as long as you have good teeth. However, if you have a missing front tooth or no teeth at all, it’s best not to smile.
Smiling, while much ado about teeth, is also much ado about culture, particularly a culture where the huckster or salesman is king, for the more you smile the more you sell.
Interesting comment, Christopher. In the 70′s I instructed many people who had just arrived in the United States from all over the world. A number of them came from countries where dental care was lax. They had missing teeth or just poor teeth, but that did not stop them from smiling big and laughing. We had a lot of pure fun in my class trying to learn English.
Being a Frenchman or woman, these days is no smiling matter as Sarko and Hollande have learned. As for Stanford’s students they may well wonder if that smiling lady is not packing a gun and relishing the thought of shooting them all.;
Oh Paul.
I know, I irritated you, but that is how that gun toting divine right that you USAers deem yours makes the whole country look. When you have state laws providing that shooting someone that you felt threatening is justifiable self defense (Florida, for instance) us foreigners do ask ourselves if we are safe traveling in the U.S. on a bad hair day.
Hate to sound smug, Paul, but those bent on harm will do so, regardless of legislation.
When I bought my new Beretta 9mm handgun last month, it was the last gun in the store.
So what? It just demonstrate how crazy that gun thing is. In a crowded place, with everyone carrying a concealed weapon anything can happen. Just think about the crossfire and the dozens of shells flying should anyone panic and start shooting. Which is just the N.R.A. ‘s cup a tea..
I was actually just thinking of the many nights I am here alone with the protection of a Labrador retriever. I also think of the rattlesnakes and prowlers. I would have no problem shooting a snake, reptilian or otherwise.
That is much different from carrying a gun 24/7.
Cheri,
Love your awesome smile and wait until you see this quote from the Wall Street Journal today from an article entitled, “Stress-Busting Smiles.”
“Some experts believe only a genuine, full smile, confers health benefits. Such a smile, commonly referred to as a Duchenne smile, after the 19th century French neurologist who first described it, activates major muscles around the mouth and the eyes. By contrast, a standard social smile, which is sometimes called a Pan Am smile after the polite expression the former airline’s stewardesses used to greet passengers, activates only the muscles around the mouth. A Duchenne smile “generates the physiology of positive emotion and the changes in the brain” associated with spontaneous enjoyment, says Paul Ekman, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Studies have found that the intensity of a person’s smile can help predict life satisfaction over time and even longevity. What’s unclear is whether smiling reflects a person’s overall happiness or if the act of smiling contributes to that happiness. Marianne LaFrance, a psychology professor at Yale University, believes it is a bit of both.
“It’s probably bidirectional,” she says. “People who smile more tend to elicit more positive connections with other people,” which in turn help make you happier and healthier.”
Well, there you go. Some may say it’s not about the smile, HA, it’s all about the smile and the bigger the better!
Hugs from your PA friend,
MJ
Gosh MJ, thanks for taking your precious time to type out the substantive parts of this article in the WSJ.
I’m wondering in your practice, if you have made any generalizations about smiling?
Well yes, Cheri, I have recognized that the majority of people entering therapy are not smiling. And that makes sense when one thinks about it because people are not coming to counseling to discuss happy things. Once the relationship begins, however, between a client and me, once a client feels the safety within the therapeutic setting, every emotion can surface and that is the good news. One “opens up” so to speak. The scales fall from one’s eyes. It’s biblical because for now one is becoming conscious and so much prima materia can be considered. Plus, all that gold to be mined.
Depressed affect, however, does suggest sadness. One can note it even in children. Now, having said that, being serious is different. Speaking about a sad or serious circumstance and laughing or smiling (while doing so) is very noteworthy, too, and considered to be inappropriate to ideation. I’m sure many of your loyal readers have experienced that in some people. It’s most disconcerting. Undifferentiated feeling is difficult for others and those feelings are – more often than not – projected upon the mate and/or the therapist. Hold on with that one.
This is a complicated topic yet an interesting one. My last thought is that people can lie with their eyes but normally less so with the mouth – with or without a smile.
This topic is fascinating to me, especially. Maybe you could write a series of blogposts. I am sure all of my readers would follow you there. As a seasoned teacher, I have made the same observation about student lying. The eyes can manage; the mouth betrays. I am so interested in Jungian psychology–wish I had time to become a Jungian therapist like you.
I’ve remarked on you people, you broad smilers, you happy folk. I’ve wondered why you were trying to cheer me up, what you were trying to prove. I’ve noted life goes better for you — it must, you are smiling about it, smiling broadly, smiling a la Duchenne. Bearing a peculiar desire to be happy, I wished to understand. My research took a fateful turn with the turn of a woman. A woman who smiles, deep and broad and bright. In all our circle she smiles biggest, largest, hugest. She also lives deepest and most intensely, and draws followers and the love-struck in her wake as a passing Duesenberg draws the leaves scattered along the roadway. Now I find my own smiles have broadened, and what was an an endemic familial inability to live, laugh, and love fully, despite my progenitors’ long association with the relentless cheer at Cal Berkeley, has been replaced with habits of joy and, I daresay, even optimism. It is a disease.
Don, this paragraph is gorgeously written. Wow. You are a fine writer indeed.
What you have written here also put a smile on my face this morning. Thank you.
I’m put in mind of *this Perry Como song* about smiling.
I clearly remember when it was Big, I’m that old. What if Adele were to record it? Would it again be Big?
Well Christopher, I am that old too. As bogard has observed, we are a good kind of old.
There is determination in a smile, a positive wish to demonstrate the appreciation of life and all it has to offer. it is the knowledge of what may be achieved, given the will, not a measure of failure to achieve.
The self-satisfied and privileged often have no effort to make and it does not occur to them to acquire the smiling habit.
Consider the generally optimistic pop-music of the ‘fifties as compared to the misery so often expressed these days and draw the parallel.
There are those, of course, who will remain defeatist, whatever their circumstance.
I am sure that your smile spreads much happiness and brings many smiles in return, though they may be out of your sight.
Your observations are true, Richard, in my own limited experience. And thank you.
Your smile is memorable. A big, welcoming happy expression making everyone happy to see you in return. And let’s face it—-it takes less effort than a frown.
And look at that gorgeous smile on an octogenarian who looks and acts like a much younger woman. Hooray for you my friend AK.
I learned the power of a smile in 1984 when you laid down the law in N-9. (Oh, and I didn’t know all us “USAers” were supposed to tote concealed weapons. I thought I had the right not to do so as well. I guess you French know better, as you’ve gone through five constitutions, and we “USAers” have had to make due with one.)
Touche’ Mr. Tartuffe! See How to Tell the Difference between a Pilgrim and a Puritan.
“Man, you know that Sabraw woman? One married to that ol’ judge? Man, she’s so bad-ass she smiles during a root canal!!!
Oh gee, W.k.– I thought you were going to observe I was “bad-ass” because I know how to shoot my Beretta.
This may be an example of synchronicity, for, while this afternoon perusing the website of the French newspaper Le Point (which I do habitually), I happened upon *this piece about a just-published survey* done by Aquafresh (the toothpaste guys) on how often your average Frenchman smiles.
It appears he smiles on average 4.6 times a day. This number, though, declines the older he gets, notwithstanding he (your average Frenchman) knows smiling is good for mental and physical health.
Under 25s smile 7 times a day, while seniors smile just 4 times a day. 28% of under 25s smile 10 times a day, while only 15% of over 65s do. However, 8% of under 25s smile only once a day, but 21% of over 65s smile only once a day.
I don’t know the comparable numbers for Americans. Whatever they are, toothpaste companies like Aquafresh obviously have a vested interest in everyone smiling more, wherever in the world they live.
Oh, this is so fascinating to me. Thanks for taking your time to type all of this! You could have easily just left the link. The most surprising piece of data is that 21% of over 65′s only smile once a day. I’m thinking of that statistic. Still, that means that 79% of over 65′s smile more, right?
Of course, if you live alone or spend a lot of time alone, why would you smile? I’ve been alone since 2pm today and haven’t smiled once. I did laugh outl oud when, while watering my olallieberry plants, I dropped the high pressure hose and from 2 feet, it sprayed me in the face with great pressure, enough to knock my sunglasses off.
I would like to say, Christopher, that your comments I do treasure. Thank you for your patience with me throughout the years.
Here’s the link to the piece:
http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/les-francais-rient-de-moins-en-moins-en-vieillissant-selon-un-sondage-28-02-2013-1634515_23.php
Looking again at the article, I noted with chagrin that I’d confused “lire” (to laugh), with “sourire” (to smile). So that the article is about laughing, not smiling.
If everyone spoke English, this sort of confusion wouldn’t happen.
“lire” (to laugh) should of course have been “rire” (to laugh)
Hi Christopher,
Not too big of a difference. From a smile often is born a laugh!
“… a person’s smile “can help predict life satisfaction over time and even LONGEVITY…”
So now it is official: my life will be (Hobbes) “poor, solitary, nasty, brutish and short”.
Since moving back to Europe, I have been educated in the fallacy you suffer from. Smiling is … naive. Cliche. Inappropriate. American. Vee must frown. Life is serious, tattoo or not, piercing or not. Zat’s ze vay it is.
Off to buy term life insurance. Bye
Oh vell.