Grin and Bear It

In the study reported here, we investigated whether covertly manipulating positive facial expressions would influence cardiovascular and affective responses to stress. Participants (N = 170) naive to the purpose of the study completed two different stressful tasks while holding chopsticks in their mouths in a manner that produced a Duchenne smile, a standard smile, or a neutral expression. Awareness was manipulated by explicitly asking half of all participants in the smiling groups to smile (and giving the other half no instructions related to smiling). Findings revealed that all smiling participants, regardless of whether they were aware of smiling, had lower heart rates during stress recovery than the neutral group did, with a slight advantage for those with Duchenne smiles. Participants in the smiling groups who were not explicitly asked to smile reported less of a decrease in positive affect during a stressful task than did the neutral group. These findings show that there are both physiological and psychological benefits from maintaining positive facial expressions during stress.

[1]  P. Ekman,et al.  The Duchenne smile: emotional expression and brain physiology. II. , 1990, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[2]  C. Hertzog,et al.  Measurement of Affective States in Adults , 1989, Research on aging.

[3]  L. Rubin.  The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression , 1992 .

[4]  J. Laird.  Self-attribution of emotion: the effects of expressive behavior on the quality of emotional experience. , 1974, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[5]  P. Ekman,et al.  Facial action coding system: a technique for the measurement of facial movement , 1978 .

[6]  P. Ekman,et al.  Voluntary Smiling Changes Regional Brain Activity , 1993 .

[7]  J. Wardle,et al.  Neuroendocrine and cardiovascular correlates of positive affect measured by ecological momentary assessment and by questionnaire , 2007, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[8]  J. R. Turner,et al.  Cardiovascular Reactivity and Stress , 1994 .

[9]  J. Laird,et al.  The deliberate control of emotional experience through control of expressions , 2001 .

[10]  D. Bem.  Self-Perception Theory , 1972 .

[11]  R. Davidson.  Emotion and Affective Style: Hemispheric Substrates , 1992 .

[12]  P. Ekman.  Telling lies: clues to deceit in the marketplace , 1985 .

[13]  A. Glenberg,et al.  Cosmetic Use of Botulinum Toxin-A Affects Processing of Emotional Language , 2009, Psychological science.

[14]  T. Kamarck,et al.  A global measure of perceived stress. , 1983, Journal of health and social behavior.

[15]  B. Fredrickson,et al.  The Undoing Effect of Positive Emotions , 2000, Motivation and emotion.

[16]  L. Leonard.  Inhibiting and Facilitating Conditions of the Human Smile: A Nonobtrusive Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis (Attitudes and Social Cognition) , 1988 .

[17]  G. Boulogne,et al.  The mechanism of human facial expression: Frontmatter , 1990 .

[18]  P. Ekman,et al.  Linkages between facial expressions of anger and transient myocardial ischemia in men with coronary artery disease. , 2001, Emotion.

[19]  W. James,et al.  The Principles of Psychology. , 1983 .

[20]  Andrew Steptoe,et al.  Impaired cardiovascular recovery following stress predicts 3-year increases in blood pressure , 2005, Journal of hypertension.

[21]  P. Ekman,et al.  Felt, false, and miserable smiles , 1982 .

[22]  M. Lorr,et al.  Profile of mood states , 1971 .

[23]  Ann Senghas,et al.  The effects of BOTOX injections on emotional experience. , 2010, Emotion.

[24]  B. Fredrickson,et al.  Positive Emotions Speed Recovery from the Cardiovascular Sequelae of Negative Emotions. , 1998, Cognition & emotion.

[25]  S. Lyubomirsky,et al.  The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? , 2005, Psychological bulletin.

[26]  J. Lanzetta,et al.  Effects of nonverbal dissimulation on emotional experience and autonomic arousal. , 1976, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  F. Strack,et al.  Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: a nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[28]  Sheldon Cohen,et al.  Does positive affect influence health? , 2005, Psychological bulletin.

[29]  D. Keltner,et al.  PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Expressions of Positive Emotion in Women ' s College Yearbook Pictures and Their Relationship to Personality and Life Outcomes Across Adulthood , 2004 .

[30]  J. Rick Turner,et al.  Cardiovascular Reactivity and Stress: Patterns of Physiological Response , 1994 .

[31]  P. Ellsworth,et al.  The role of facial response in the experience of emotion. , 1979, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[32]  M. Lauer,et al.  Heart-rate recovery immediately after exercise as a predictor of mortality. , 1999, The New England journal of medicine.

[33]  Alicia A. Grandey,et al.  Display rules versus display autonomy: emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and task performance in a call center simulation. , 2007, Journal of occupational health psychology.

[34]  M. Kruger,et al.  Smile Intensity in Photographs Predicts Longevity , 2010, Psychological science.

[35]  M. Litaker,et al.  Cardiovascular (CV) responsivity and recovery to acute stress and future CV functioning in youth with family histories of CV disease: a 4-year longitudinal study. , 2001, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.