May 6, 2008
A brief history of the smile
A reference to the facial feedback hypothesis led to an article that touches on Harvey Ball’s creation of the smiley face:
One of the pioneers of the study of smiles was a graphic artist named Harvey Ball. It was Ball’s belief that the power of the smile was so great that even a symbolic representation was enough to cheer people up. In the early 60s, Ball was assigned to promote the State Mutual Life Assurance Company’s friendship campaign. Ball first drew a curved line on a yellow circle. Afraid that disgruntled employees would attempt to subvert his creation by turning the smile upside down, Ball added two dots to represent eyes. In less than ten minutes, the phenomenon of the “smiley face” was born. If Ball himself can be taken as an example, the smiley face had its desired effect. Even though Ball never saw any of the profits from his creation, according to his son, he left the world with no regrets, happy to have this as his legacy.
Zygomatic smiles:
A “true” or zygomatic smile requires the contraction of special zygomaticus muscles in the face that are directly linked to the cerebral cortex. The close connection between these muscles and emotion means that a zygomatic smile is very difficult to fake. Humans are also very adept at detecting false smiles. We can tell from a young age when people are “faking it.”
And the facial feedback hypothesis:
Smiling itself produces feelings of happiness. The hypothesis states, “Involuntary facial movements provide sufficient peripheral information to drive emotional experience.” The research to prove this hypothesis seems appropriately comical. In one study participants were instructed to watch cartoons holding a pencil in their mouths, either between their lips or between their teeth. People with the pencils in their lips were therefore prevented from smiling. It turned out that the people with the pencils in their teeth, who could smile, rated cartoons funnier than those who could not.
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