The fact that we can make accurate predictions on the basis of thin slices of experience is well-documented. It seems that we can also make fairly accurate predictions about your general well-being--things such as health and personal and professional success as well as happiness--simply by looking at the grin on your face. Before I go on, you should take this test...
Chances are, you didn't do well. That's probably because you were unaware of the fact that when we fake a smile we voluntarily contract the zygomatic major muscle (this raises the corners of the mouth) but when we are happy, and grin genuinely, our orbicularis oculi muscle also contracts involuntarily (these claims are somewhat controversial--for instance, it seems like some of us can fake these smiles if we are instructed to). The inauthentic, please-kill-me-I-am-already-dead-inside smile has come to be known as the 'Botox' smile. This is because plastic surgeons minimize the appearance of crow's feet by injecting botulinum toxin into the orbicularis oculi muscle, paralyzing it...
Sometimes, phony smiles are referred to as Pan-Am smiles, because tired and annoyed flight attendants are often required to be courteous and grin when they are interacting with rude passengers. David Foster Wallace called this "the professional smile" in his 1996 essay “Shipping Out”:
You know this smile – the strenuous contraction of circumoral fascia w/ incomplete zygomatic involvement – the smile that doesn’t quite reach the smiler’s eyes and that signifies nothing more than a calculated attempt to advance the smiler’s own interests by pretending to like the smilee.
Anyhoo, Duchenne smiles are bona fide smiles in which the zygomatic major muscles and orbicularis oculi muscles contract. On the left, we see the Pan-Am smile. On the right we see the Duchenne Smile.
Duchenne smiles are named after the man who identified them: Duchenne de Boulogne. Illustrations of Duchenne's fascinating photographs, in which he faradized his assistant's face, were featured in Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals...
Your slices should be thin, but they shouldn't be too thin. In the test you took earlier, you probably were just looking at the mouths of subjects and you probably did worse than those who were focusing on the mouths and eyes. It turns out honest-to-goodness Duchenne smiles can be used to predict a number of desirable outcomes.
In 2010, scientists looked at 230 photos of baseball players from 1952 and identified Duchenne smiles. Those with Duchenne smiles were more likely to be alive 60 years later. In a 2009 study, scientists looked at childhood and college yearbook photos. Those who smiled least in their photographs were roughly five times more likely to get a divorce than those who exhibited Duchenne smiles. This research corroborated a 2001 study that showed Duchenne smiles in senior yearbook photographs predicted a variety of positive outcomes 30 years later. People with Duchene smiles didn't just have better marriages than those who didn't. They were happier. They had better cognitive skills and more stable personalities. They were even more likely to report leading more fulfilling lives.
Why does thin slicing work so well in these cases?
When thin slicing works, as it does in the nun study (which focuses on autobiographies), it is probably because it locks in on an indicator of a causal antecedent of a particular phenomenon. Perhaps positive emotions, which cause Duchenne smiles and are, in turn, caused by positive emotional dispositions, are at the heart of a good life. It seems that Duchenne smiles are closely correlated with activity in the left anterior temporal region of the brain, which is associated with positive affect.
Perhaps, one might argue, positive affect is the essence of well-being...
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