Smile and make YOUR day better? - the facts behind smile...
PLAN FROM TODAY: Be nice to people and SMILE! you will be happy and you will make others happy
A smile is a facial expression formed by flexing the muscles near both ends of the mouth. The smile can also be found around the eyes.
“Service with a Smile”—This has always been at the core of American businesses since the beginning of the 1900s. Research continually proves that this is true; smiling really does increase attractiveness and likability between humans. In fact, smiling correlates with greater trust, greater financial earnings, and increased interpersonal cooperation. In a time of increased stress due to cutbacks, high debt, and increasing family issues, employees are often required to work with a distressed public. However, a smile tends to convey respect, patience, empathy, hospitality and compassion. For example, when an employee smiles at a stressed customer, and exhibits excellent listening skills, most of the time, there is a report of total satisfaction. Research also reports that people receive more help when they smile. Even the smile of a stranger produces more “Good Samaritan” effects on the receiver. When you smile, even memory retrieval of your name is enhanced as is shown in neuroscience research.
What does Smile mean?
Among humans, it is an expression denoting pleasure, joy, happiness, or amusement, but can also be an involuntary expression of anxiety, in which case it is known as a grimace.
Smiling is something that is understood by everyone despite culture, race, or religion; it is internationally known.
Cross-cultural studies have shown that smiling is a means of communicating emotions throughout the world. But there are large differences between different cultures. A smile can also be spontaneous or artificial.
Origin of Smile
Many biologists think the smile originated as a sign of fear. Primalogist Signe Preuschoft traces the smile back over 30 million years of evolution to a "fear grin" stemming from monkeys and apes who often used barely clenched teeth to portray to predators that they were harmless. Biologists believe the smile has evolved differently among species and especially among humans.
Biology is not the only academic discipline that interprets the smile. Those who study kinesics view the smile as an affect display. It can communicate feelings such as: love, happiness, pride, contempt, and embarrassment.
When do we start smiling?
Newborns often exhibit smiles within the first three days of their lives, especially while sleeping. However these early smiles are spontaneous and are not a response to outside stimulation. These early smiles are referred to as "reflex smiles." Between 6 and 8 weeks, most babies begin to exhibit "social smiles", meaning the baby will smile at his/her caregivers or in response to stimuli. Most babies laugh between 3 and 4 months.