![\"Why](\"http:\/\/www.jennifermargulis.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Toddler-smiling.-Photo-credit-Alexander-Dummer-1024x683.jpeg\")
\nWhy smile? How many words is a smile worth?<\/p>\n
\nWhy smile? How many words is a smile worth?<\/p>\n
I interviewed Marianne LaFrance<\/a> by telephone at her office at Yale University last year for an article for O: The Oprah Magazine<\/em><\/a> about LaFrance’s book on smiling. I read the book when it first came out in hardcover, and found it fascinating.<\/p>\n When LaFrance told me last week that Lip Service has just been released in paperback under the new title, Why Smile: The Science Behind Facial Expressions<\/em><\/a>, I dusted off my notes from our interview.<\/p>\n I asked Marianne LaFrance how a researcher and professor of Psychology became interested in smiles?<\/p>\n \u201cAs Herman Melville once wrote, \u2018The smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguity,\u2019\u201d LaFrance answered (you know you\u2019re talking to a Yale professor when she starts quoting Melville). \u201cThat\u2019s where my fascination came from. The more I studied it, the more I realized it is not something that is straightforward.\u201d<\/p>\n LaFrance told me that what everyone believes about smiles is true: They really are contagious.<\/strong> I smile, you smile, and you turn around and see someone else and that person smiles too. (Does that work for reading about smiles too, I wonder? Are you smiling now?)<\/p>\n She also told me that people\u2019s facial expressions are much more complicated than we think,<\/strong> and that people express an array of emotions on their face at the same time. One way scientists study this is by isolating parts of the face and examining them separately.<\/p>\n How much and when you smile, according to LaFrance, depends on where you live.<\/p>\n Smiling is part of a cultural dynamic. People in colder climates, it seems, really do smile less, which is one reason young Americans (especially women from the southern States) sometimes unwittingly get themselves into uncomfortable situations in Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cIn southern European cultures to know someone is to be in spitting range,” LaFrance told me, “whereas in Nordic countries the assumption is that kind of closeness should come with trust, experience, and knowledge, and needs to be built up over time. Then one can be more open, more expressive facially, and more open about what one says about oneself.\u201d<\/p>\n Not long after LaFrance and I spoke, I went to a conference for investigative journalists in sunny southern Florida. I noticed how friendly the Floridians were, and how often everyone smiled.<\/p>\n Then I met a journalist from Norway<\/a>.<\/p>\n He probably wondered why I was looking at him so keenly.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t help myself.\u00a0I noticed that he barely smiled.<\/p>\n So I told him about LaFrance’s observations that people from colder countries keep more distance, and smile less, and asked him what he thought.<\/p>\n Harald looked serious for a moment and then his face broke into a grin. He told me he thought LaFrance was right. That in Norway you don\u2019t smile at strangers, unless you’re trying to get them into bed<\/a>.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s the Danish, he called over his shoulder as we were both hurrying into different sessions, who are the real swingers of Scandinavia.<\/p>\n I wonder if that means that Danes smile more?<\/p>\n Related content:<\/strong><\/span> Why smile? How many words is a smile worth? I interviewed Marianne LaFrance by telephone at her office at Yale University last year for an article for O: The Oprah Magazine about LaFrance’s book on smiling. I read the book when it first came out in hardcover, and found it fascinating. When LaFrance told me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[119,104,8162],"tags":[361,362,9586,363],"yoast_head":"\n
\nWhat the Size of Your Smile Says About You<\/a>
\nY’all be Good Now, Y’Hear?<\/a>
\nNonsense Poem That Will Make You Smile<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"