Body Language for Success Part 6 in the series
Your smile is a major social signal and it’s made up of many mini muscles and a long history of interpreting their subtle movements.
Smiles are made up of lips which are loaded with biological signals and sensuous messages designed to appeal to us all. They even support mate selection and every day attraction. Humans are sensitive to the arrangement of muscles and those formations rarely lie about our true emotions. Our unconscious assessment of the size and fullness of the lips gives us information about a man’s status and virility and a woman’s fertility potential.
For our business and social networking purposes, know that the mouth also tell us how someone is feeling about our interaction with them, and how open they are to us. The smile is both a biological marker and a universally present part of human interaction.
A smile can overcome even the most difficult situations such as a lack of language, social faux pas or a needed ice breaker between people.
The nuances of a smile affect others as they detect how we feel and it affects us too! Feedback from our own facial muscles can modify emotional centres in our brain. As a result we feel better when we smile.
Different smiles different meanings and results
Let’s look at the two basic smiles
1. The “full hearted” smile
We greet people with this smile while making eye contact and usually exposing our upper teeth.
This genuine and sincere smile makes others feel that we are happy to see us. We feel accepted and welcomed by what we perceive to be a true and impulsive expression of joy.
Facial muscles raise the corners of the mouth. This exposes our upper teeth and lifts up both the cheeks, at the same time and the skin around the eye socket moves inwards. The muscles are clearly defined, the deeper the emotion.
This type of smile can last from a fraction of a second to several seconds, but no longer.
Our upper and lower teeth show when we smile broadly. Holding a broad smile usually means a move towards laughter is coming. In this case it’s normal for us to have less eye contact.
2. The counterfeit smile
This ‘fake’ smile is ‘put on’ to hide negative feelings or to actually fool others.
It is asymmetrical or not as balanced as the genuine smile
Because it takes mindful effort to move facial muscles into a deceptive smile, it will last longer and spread over more of the face.
A fake smile swill only work to hide negative emotions for a short period of time and it leads to “the instinct” telling us something is wrong.
We’ve often connected the fake smile to the face of suspect politicians, inexperienced actors and salesmen. But, having worked in hospitality industry for many years, I’ve also seen counterfeits on people whose job requires smiling all the time.
VIP: The eyes have it. Real smiles don’t allow the ‘smiler’ to control their eyes. Eyes squint, become narrower and even crinkle up. Note the corner of the eye and then see how a genuine smile raises the upper lip and flattens the lower lip squarely.
Send yourself a message of appreciation and smile at yourself fully next time you look in the mirror!