Smile（原創）
 

People often say that a smile is the cheapest but best greeting card to present in front of others. Exactly, when people are smiling, we will often say that they are friendly and beautiful. Actually, a smile, not only from the angle of physics or psychology, is good for ourselves and others.

Research over the last 20 years has been proving scientifically what aphorisms and popular song lyrics have been espousing for eons: smile, and the whole world smiles with you, and grey skies really will clear up if you put on a happy face.

"A smile is central to our evolution and one of the most powerful tools of human behaviour. " says Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University if California, Berkeley, who has studied the importance of facial expression –including the variety and impact of smiles.

He and his group systematically categorised 43 separate muscle movements of the face and more than 3000 meaningful combinations calling the system the Facial Action Coding System or FACS. Some scientists coded the smiles of 114 women who posed for their university yearbook photo in 1958 and 1960. All but three smiled, but 61 gave a fake courtesy smile, and 50 had spontaneous joyful smiles. Their study found that over 30 years of follow-up the women who displayed smiles were more apt to get married and remain married, and scored higher on tests of emotional and physical well-being. (my god! That's interesting!)

If you don't smile, you are very limited in your ability to pass on information and relate to other people. There are some people who cannot smile due to some disease. There is a doctor who belongs to this group of people. He is confused that most patients think that he is hard to approach and communicate with. "Because I can't smile, people think I am unfriendly, sad and angry or depressed, I can't show them what I am really like. " So as we can see smiling is such a powerful part of our conversation capability.

Putting on a happy face not only helps us make friends, it translates into altered brain chemistry that makes us feel better. When a mother exchanges smiles with a baby, it contributes to the infants development of attachment and intellectI met a baby this afternoon, he was just staring at me and I smiled to him, and to my surprise, he became excited and sweetly smiled back at me, staring all the time. I too became happy and kept smiling experiencing a nice feeling.

So my dear friends, will you still grudge your beautiful smile after reading the passage above?

作者：四川大學通訊員 屈上