In the video below, Dr. Matsumoto chose to address a question submitted to us for National Smile Month: How can smiling boost one’s mood? This is actually true, and smiling helps boost our mood by interfacing with central physical and emotional processes in our brain. Dr. Matsumoto describes these emotional processes as sort of a…
Read MoreDoes A Smile Mean The Same Thing In All Cultures?
How People Express and Perceive Smiles We know that expressions differ across cultures, but an exploration of how we recognize smiles brings that observation to the forefront! In a major 1993 study, Humintell’s own Dr. David Matsumoto and Tsutomu Kudoh sought to explore the differences between how Americans and Japanese express and perceive smiles. This…
Read MoreThe Contagious Smile
Many of us often feel that smiling can be irresistibly contagious, but is this actually true? In fact, a recent study published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences adds to a growing body of evidence that indicates that other people’s expressions really can have a tangible impact on our mood. The study authors, Dr. Paula Niedenthal…
Read MoreWhy Do We Smile?
You’ve probably heard that when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you. In reality, that’s not exactly the case. According to researchers, Americans smile more than residents of other countries, and those other countries don’t seem eager to follow our grins. For some, persistent American smiling can be disconcerting. To learn more, we talked…
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