Samar Zebian - It is fashionable, especially in the urban social sphere in Lebanon, to greet someone with exaggerated warmth and enthusiasm; kisses, lots of smiling, intonation and heightened facial and body expression are common. A good way turn people off is to offer an honest and undramatized greeting. These observations are from a person who finds these spontaneous theatrics laborious. I’ve long wondered, whether you could possibly feel better (even temporarily) or like someone more if you smile and greet them enthusiastically? The question could also be asked in a more Darwinian way, do uninhibited facial expressions intensify our emotions and do repressed expressions mask our emotions?

Let’s break down the issue into parts. Scientists LOVE to break things down. Part 1: what happens to our brain when we observe another person smiling? Part 2 is the crux of the issue and it has to do with the nature of the relationship between one’s emotions and facial expressions, or more precisely the position of one’s facial muscles. If social smiling is a healthy cultural ritual, regardless of whether it is fake or not, than the muscular formation of a smile, in and of itself, should trigger newly formed positive emotions.

Beginning with part 1 and after we recognize facial expressions, mimicry occurs and it involves the automatic and subtle tendency to adopt the facial expressions of the interlocutor. Mimicry can be invisible to the naked eye and therefore we observe mimicry using an Electromyography (EMG) which records electrical activity produced by skeletal muscles in the face. This is how we observe covert smiling. Significantly, mimicry helps us recognize others’ emotions by mirco-simulating their expressions and this in turn facilitates greater understanding between interlocutors. 

Moving on to the second part and the crux for understanding the degree to which facial expressions affect emotional processing, researchers have taken advantage of a naturally occurring experiment. Millions of men and women are voluntarily opting for Botox-the mildly poisonous and temporary fountain of youth. Botox is a chemical injection which temporarily paralyzes the muscles that cause wrinkles and frown lines. Capitalizing on this natural experiment, researchers compared Botox users to a randomly selected group of non-Botox users. Both groups were asked to read and comprehend happy, sad, and angry sentences. The Botox group took longer to read and understand the sad and angry sentences leaving the comprehension of happy emotions unaffected. Moreover and before treatment, the Botox group did not take longer to comprehend a different set of sad sentences.

Adding to this emerging story, Botox users were asked to mimic angry faces while their brains were being scanned under an fMRI (brain imaging device). The brain scans of Botox users showed significantly lower brain activity in emotion related brain circuits, namely the amygdala, hypothalamus and parts of the brain stem. Together these findings tell a coherent story. Botox users’ limited ability to frown impaired their ability to comprehend written expressions of negative emotions and it depressed their mimicry ability which gets in the way of apprehending the negative emotions of others.

Thus far the evidence suggests that we do not experience and comprehend emotions fully unless we can express them facially (setting aside the complex issue of non-facial expressions of emotion). This might suggest that facial expression is necessary and sufficient for emotional processing. However this strong conclusion is problematic because individuals with congenital facial paralysis, those unable to convey facial expressions, retained the ability to detect, discriminate, and imagine emotions. As such facial feedback is only one means by which we comprehend and experience emotional expression.

Getting back to our contagious urban greeting rituals, it would seem that smiling is good for you even if you are not in the mood. It certainly facilitates communication. Anyways, you can’t fully stop your brain from smiling back because of mimicry. However, there is at least one more complexity. Although faking a smile won’t hurt you, the habitual suppression of emotions is not healthy-especially negative emotions such as disgust and anger. So, if we want to put all the pieces back together again, the evidence suggests that the next time you run into an acquaintance you can go with a real or fake smile- UNLESS you are angry or disgusted and in that case it might be better to look away and fake a cell phone call. Now you know more about the tight connections between the facial muscular system and emotions and also why non-Botox users carry cell phones and also why Botox users smile even when it might not be appropriate.