Smirking, smug or showing all teeth, smiling is a basic mode of communication in human societies. But it is not unique: “the” false “smile that occurs when you are not happy is a good example of the very wide spectrum of possible expressions associated with smiling. People smile in very different circumstances and in very different emotional states, ”explains Paula Niedenthal, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (United States).
Researchers at Cardiff University and Glasgow University in the UK have identified three distinct, frequent and reliably recognizable forms of smiling: the rewarding smile, the affiliation smile, and the dominating smile. To do this, they computer generated thousands of smiling faces by randomly activating the different muscles of the face, with the zygomaticus as a constant, which triggers the smile. Then they analyzed them and asked a panel of people to indicate the emotions that the people might be feeling in the images.
Asymmetry symbol of hierarchy
When we smile at a baby and he returns the favor, it is a rewarding sneer, the most intuitive. It activates the zygomaticus muscles in a symmetrical way, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows and the lips which move forward. Another variant, the affectionate smile or affiliation, is carried out in a spirit of tolerance, recognition, bond. It also means the absence of aggression or threat. It looks like the reward smile but the lips are stretched wider, they are thinner, closed, and do not show the teeth.
In contrast, the smile of domination displays the status of its issuer, its hierarchy, its power, even its condescension. It is asymmetrical in the lift of the lips, eyebrows and cheekbones. In this study published in Psychological Science, the researchers decipher the smile as a social tool, but they also show the importance of respecting the expression of emotions in reconstructive or aesthetic surgery.
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