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British researchers may have come to discover two new functions to smile: self-encouragement and social commitment.
In the common imaginary, a smile necessarily reflects a situation of pleasure: when one crosses a smiling person, one imagines that she is happy, that she has just learned good news or (quite simply) that she spends a pleasant day.
Yet, according to a new study conducted by the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (in England), a smile is not necessarily a sign of pleasure: According to the British researchers, it would sometimes be a marker of social commitment or of self-encouragement.
To arrive at this (strange) conclusion, the researchers organized an experiment with 44 volunteers aged 18 to 35 years. These were placed in front of a computer and had to pass a geography test consisting of 9 particularly difficult questions. Their facial expressions were analyzed in real time; At the end of the experiment, participants also had to qualify their attitude.
Self-ENCOURAGEMENT and SOCIAL commitment
Verdict? The researchers found that the participants did not smile during the time they were thinking about the questions: on the other hand, they noticed more frequent (and more candid) smiles when the computer announced "response Inaccurate "."In this situation, we feel that smiling acts both as a factor of self-encouragement and social commitment-even if the participants are" only "facing a computer," explains Dr. Harry Witchel, the principal author of this work. "The smile is not necessarily related to a situation of pleasure."