Your smile is not trivial, it indicates elements of your personality and influences the way others perceive you.
When someone meets you or looks at you, your smile is one of the first things they notice. And the latter is not only used to gauge your level of sympathy, according to psychologist Zak Witkower. The smile allows you to accurately determine your main character traits based on its work.
The smile is linked to personality
In his study, published in the journal PNAS Nexusthe psychologist wanted to better understand what smiles can reveal about personality. First, he compared the Duchenne smile, considered real – it uses the muscles at the corner of the mouth and eyes – and the forced one.
To do this, he asked 300 participants to sit in front of his camera. When he asked them, they naturally had to smile. Thus, he was able to observe common points between the type of smile and personality.
“About half of the volunteers [fait un sourire dit de Duchenne]explains Zak Witkower. Not everyone smiles the same way, but people who describe themselves as warm, trustworthy, conscientious, or even less aggressive and arrogant naturally display this specific smile“.
Others perceive us through our smile
In a second experiment, around 1,000 people had to identify the personality traits of the 300 participants photographed during the first phase of the study. They had to say whether they found them reliable, warm, conscientious, aggressive or proud. The photos presented were either smiling or neutral.
By comparing their judgment to the personality traits that the participants had attributed to themselves at the beginningthe results show that the evaluation is more accurate when people smile.
“Viewers who made ratings based on a smiling face were generally more accurate than those who rated a neutral facedetails Zak Witkower in a press release. In fact, the accuracy of these judgments was directly related to the observation of Duchenne’s smiles”.
For the psychologist, our smile is truly revealing. “Someone who attributes cooler character traits to themselves cannot easily transition to a smile as warm as Duchenne’s smile. On the other hand, he may display an asymmetrical smile, or smile only with the corners of the mouth but keeping the eye muscles less stressed..”
In today’s society, smiling is crucial. It is displayed everywhere, both at work and in personal life, through social networks for example. “On your LinkedIn profile, on a dating site, in a directory, on an employee badge: it’s often the first thing people see about you, before you even introduce yourself, concludes Zak Witkower. It is important to be aware that our smile reveals personality traits to others. (…) And the question is whether it is right.” A smile to work on to best reflect your personality.
