38-4 How do our facial expressions influence our feelings?

As William James (1890) struggled with feelings of depression and grief, he came to believe that we can control emotions by going “through the outward movements” of any emotion we want to experience. “To feel cheerful,” he advised, “sit up cheerfully, look around cheerfully, and act as if cheerfulness were already there.”

Studies of emotional effects of facial expressions reveal precisely what James might have predicted. Expressions not only communicate emotion, they also amplify and regulate it. In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin (1872) contended that “the free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it…. He who gives way to violent gestures will increase his rage.”

Was Darwin right? You can test his hypothesis: Fake a big grin. Now scowl. Can you feel the “smile therapy” difference? Participants in dozens of experiments have felt a difference. James Laird and his colleagues (1974, 1984, 1989) subtly induced students to make a frowning expression by asking them to “contract these muscles” and “pull your brows together” (supposedly to help the researchers attach facial electrodes). The results? The students reported feeling a little angry, and they similarly adopted other basic emotions. For example, people reported feeling more fear than anger, disgust, or sadness when made to construct a fearful expression: “Raise your eyebrows. And open your eyes wide. Move your whole head back, so that your chin is tucked in a little bit, and let your mouth relax and hang open a little” (Duclos et al., 1989).

This facial feedback effect has been found many times, in many places, for many basic emotions (FIGURE 38.6). Just activating one of the smiling muscles by holding a pen in the teeth (rather than gently in the mouth, which produces a neutral expression) makes stressful situations less upsetting (Kraft & Pressman, 2012). A heartier smile—made not just with the mouth but with raised cheeks that crinkle the eyes—enhances positive feelings even more when you are reacting to something pleasant or funny (Soussignan, 2001). Smile warmly on the outside and you feel better on the inside. When smiling, you will even more quickly understand sentences that describe pleasant events (Havas et al., 2007). Scowl and the whole world seems to scowl back.

So your face is more than a billboard that displays your feelings; it also feeds your feelings. No wonder people feel less depressed after Botox injections that paralyze the frowning muscles (Wollmer et al., 2012). Four months after treatment, people continued to report lower depression levels. Follow-up studies have found that Botox paralysis of the frowning muscles slowed people’s reading of sadness-or anger-related sentences, and it slowed activity in emotion-related brain circuits (Havas et al., 2010; Hennenlotter et al., 2008). In such ways, Botox smooths life’s emotional wrinkles.

Other researchers have observed a similar behavior feedback effect (Flack, 2006; Snodgrass et al., 1986). You can duplicate the participants’ experience: Walk for a few minutes with short, shuffling steps, keeping your eyes downcast. Now walk around taking long strides, with your arms swinging and your eyes looking straight ahead. Can you feel your mood shift? Going through the motions awakens the emotions.

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Likewise, people perceive ambiguous behaviors differently depending on which finger they move up and down while reading a story. (This was said to be a study of the effect of using finger muscles “located near the reading muscles on the motor cortex.”) If participants read the story while moving an extended middle finger, the story behaviors seemed more hostile. If read with a thumb up, they seemed more positive. Hostile gestures prime hostile perceptions (Chandler & Schwarz, 2009; Goldin-Meadow & Beilock, 2010).

You can use your understanding of feedback effects to become more empathic: Let your own face mimic another person’s expression. Acting as another acts helps us feel what another feels (Vaughn & Lanzetta, 1981). Indeed, natural mimicry of others’ emotions helps explain why emotions are contagious (Dimberg et al., 2000; Neumann & Strack, 2000). Positive, upbeat Facebook posts create a ripple effect, leading Facebook friends to also express more positive emotions (Kramer, 2012). Primates also ape one another, and their synchronized expressions help bond them (and us) together (de Waal, 2009). Losing this ability to mimic others can leave us struggling to make emotional connections, as one social worker with Moebius syndrome, a rare facial paralysis disorder, discovered while working with Hurricane Katrina refugees: When people made a sad expression, “I wasn’t able to return it. I tried to do so with words and tone of voice, but it was no use. Stripped of the facial expression, the emotion just dies there, unshared” (Carey, 2010).