Neither the number of teeth that we show, nor the opening of the mouth, nor the white of the teeth. The key to knowing if a smile is real or fake is in the eyes. The best way to determine if a smile is fake or real is to look closely at the person’s face. If the smile does not reach the eyes, the veracity of it is in doubt. When a smile is sincere, it can be seen in the look. There’s a brightness and illumination that you get that you don’t get with a fake smile. In this Supercurious post we are going to tell you some guidelines so that you can distinguish one from another. A very useful skill, yes, but with certain emotional risks.
What is the true smile?
The interest in distinguishing a real smile from a forced one is not new. In fact, it was the French doctor and researcher Guillaume Duchenne who published in 1862 the first study on the physiological differences between the two.
It was named “The Duchenne smile” and is a facial feature seen when a person is genuinely happy or feels emotions of kindness and affection. This smile is a useful tool for recognizing a person’s true emotion.
Duchenne’s smile characterized by movement of the zygomatic muscles (the arches around the eyes) and the orbicularis lip muscles (the muscles around the mouth). These muscles can create a smile with a C shape, which includes both the sides of the mouth and the eyes.
A real smile contains these two elements instead of just one. A smile that involves only the muscles near the mouth is known as a forced smile or a social smile. Usually, it is used when a person tries to fake an emotion.
His method, yes, was not very “funny” for his patients, since the doctor used electric shocks to see how the muscles worked. But the conclusions were pioneering at the time and thanks to that he was able to differentiate a false smile from a true smile.
From the Duchenne studies, many more types of smile have also been defined.
What does science conclude?
The spontaneous smile is the consequence of a limbic process that causes contraction of the zygomaticus major and minor muscles near the mouth, authors of the rise of the corner of the lips, and of the orbicularis muscle, near the eyes, which produces the rise of the cheeks and wrinkles next to the eyes. What’s more, the pressure, in this case, can be such that it leads us to cry with laughter. It has happened to you, right?
By contrast, a fake smile originates from the motor cortex. Although we can achieve the same effect in the mouth area, very few people can move the orbicularis muscle voluntarily.
How to recognize a real smile?
Like other feelings, a true smile can be deciphered by body language. In the case of the smile, the most revealing point is located in the eyes, and it is one of the curiosities of smiles.
There are people who really smile at you with sincerity. That he is excited to see you and feels what you have told him, but above all that he values you and has fun with you. It is a full, spontaneous, real smile, even contagious.
However, there are also people who pretend to smile. You can communicate on your face something in the form of a smile, but in the end it is not. She doesn’t feel. Behind that there are many reasons. They do it to deceive you, to hide, for formality or to cover up a lie. A fake, made-up, mannered, almost mechanical smile. For this reason, the problem is that sometimes we don’t know if they really smile at us or not, and we have to learn to differentiate.
A true smile is spontaneous
When a smile is real, it comes and goes naturally. Unlike a fake, where the face remains static for a longer time. A time that is excessive to be something spontaneous.
That is, it is something unconscious, while the one who outlines a false smile is focused on making sure that when smiling, seem true. It is something that, in the long run, can even lead the person to get used to falsifying.
Smiling involves more of the eyes
When we smile, we use the muscles of the mouth, but mainly those of the eyes, and they are the ones that allow us to differentiate a false smile from a real one. When someone smiles out of commitment, unnaturally, you can tell that it’s just a mouth grimace.
On the other hand, if we look at the eyes, the case is totally different. What differentiates one from the other It’s those small details called wrinkles and folds that stand out in the eyes.
Not all that glitters is gold
With these indicators, do you feel capable of distinguishing if a smile is real or fake? It’s not that easy. There are many situations in which we can use a real smile: to be polite, if we are frustrated, or even to show our response to something absurd or outrageous.
This is reflected in research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has developed a computer program capable of detecting the origin of the smile.
We must not forget the social factor, since not every provoked smile implies a negative feeling, nor vice versa. The person in front of you may be giving you a genuine smile, but because of the ridiculous hat you’re wearing and not because he’s happy to see you. Conversely, you might get a forced smile at one point because that person is having a bad day, but he’s been kind enough to show you his best side.
And it is that the smile has become a great social tool, a vehicle to fit in, be accepted and cause good impression. In fact, Dartmouth College in Hanover (USA) has carried out a study in which he concludes that politicians who appear with a real smile on electoral posters have greater success at the polls than those who use a forced one, and there are many actors who receive classes to improve this gesture in their performances.
Did you know all this? What do you think? We hope that now you know how to differentiate a fake smile from a real one. Leave us your opinions in the comments!