2. Smile! It boosts connection

Everyone wants a little more happiness, right? Two things we can count on to provide a happiness boost are chocolate 🙋and money … but it turns out there’s something more potent and accessible. The smile.

Friendship Fact
Researchers in the UK used electromagnetic brain scans and heart-rate monitors to assess the mood-boosting impact of a range of different stimuli. They had participants do, look at, or listen to a variety of things, then measured their happiness. They found that:

“One thing trumped all else. It emerged as giving participants the equivalent level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 chocolate bars. It was just as stimulating as receiving up to $25,000. What was this magic stimulus? A smile.”

Smiling has been shown to:

Make you feel happier
Make others see you as more attractive, likeable, and competent
Predict future happiness, relationship satisfaction, and even longevity! (This was determined by analyzing the width of subjects’ smiles in photos).

Smiling is a simple way to build connection and make new friends as an adult.

Reflection on Connection
It’s not surprising that a broad smile in a photo predicts future happiness—it probably reflects a happy disposition that remains relatively stable over time.

What is surprising is that smiling can actually create happy feelings. We’re happy because we smile. This is known as the “facial feedback hypothesis,” which suggests that our brains takes cues from our facial muscles, as in, “I’m smiling, therefore I must be happy.” Numerous studies back this up.

So, should you “fake it ‘til you make it” and paste a smile on your face, regardless of how you feel? No. Forced smiling feels terrible. And being told to “Smile!” is even worse. Ugh. (Are boys/men ever subjected to this indignity?)

It turns out only real smiles boost mood. If you’ve heard that holding a pencil in your mouth—to force a smile—makes you happy, that research hasn’t held up.

But, when you’re trying to make friends as an adult, what matters more than the mood boost is a smile’s power to build connection and trust. Smiling is the universal sign of friendliness. When you smile at someone, they feel seen, put at ease, and liked … and everyone likes to be liked!

Even smiling at strangers has a bigger impact than you might think. Just today, a jogger gave me a big smile and “Hi!” as they passed me … and it gave me a little jolt of “Ahh, there are good people in the world” and “It really is a beautiful day.”

Friendship practice: Smile! (For real)
Pay attention to how other people’s smiles make you feel and how yours affects them.

When you interact with other people, see if you can amp up your smile a little, while still keeping it real. Most people will smile back (mirror neurons at work), creating a little loop of reciprocal friendliness and happy chemical release.

Weekly questions. Please share your responses in the comments.

How does it feel to give or receive a fake smile vs. a real one?

Have you ever been told to smile—and what do you think people are actually communicating when they say it?