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Chapter 1: What are the misconceptions about smiling and muscle usage?
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. This is Stuff You Should Know. What in the world is that? I'm smiling from ear to ear.
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Chapter 2: How do smiles differ between humans and primates?
I'm grinning, and when I grin, my teeth come together like a bear trap. Well, if you're smiling, I bet it's because we are headed out to sea, everybody. On a five-night adults-only... Voyage with Virgin Voyages. This is October 2nd through 7th from New York City to Bermuda. We will be doing our live show and we will be joined by our colleagues and our old pals.
Stuff they don't want you to know and stuff mom never told you. That's right. So we are going to be there from October 2nd to 7th. We're going to be on that boat to Bermuda from New York and back. And you can get more information where, Chuck? At virginvoyages.com slash stuff. Come on, hang out with us on a boat. Very nice, yeah.
I think we should specify you shouldn't expect to be able to get with us because, you know, we're happily married. Yeah, that's right. And what happens at sea doesn't just stay at sea. That travels back home and you get divorced. That's right. Yeah. And you have to go to the doctor sometimes, too. Yeah, you don't want that. So we're talking today about smiling.
I think it's appropriate that I said I'm happily married because Yumi actually requested this so long ago that I went to her last week and was like, do you remember what prompted you to request smiling a long time ago? And she's like, I don't remember requesting smiling. So it'll forever be a mystery. But I'm glad that we're doing this one because we've done, like, all sorts of other stuff.
Laughing, disgust, the scream, forgiveness. Like, there's just this whole, like... aspect of human personality suite that is just kind of slowly assembling into one great person, you know?
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Chapter 3: What is the history of smiling in Western culture?
That's right. And we did an episode in the early days, I think when we were about three years old, we were podcast toddlers on whether or not smiling makes you happy. So we're going to recover a bit of that toward the end. A little. But we should probably start out by letting everyone know that you use muscles when you smile. It is all muscle movement.
And if you want to compare a smile to like other dumb, boring muscles, the reason you can smile and make like weird kind of faces is because you have a lot of fast twitch myosin fibers in your face. Yeah. And that's why you can't make a face with your bicep. Uh, I kind of can. It looks like a messed up face, but it's still, somebody would be like, I see the face in there.
It looks a little like Mr. Bill. Now you can make a kick drum beat when you flex those babies. That's with my other one. So like I'd make Mr. Bill's mouth open and closed to the kick drum beat from my other bicep. Uh, but how do we compare to our primate friends?
Oh, well, actually, it turns out, Chuck, I thought this was quite interesting, that our primates are actually, our primate friends, are actually more expressive facially because they don't speak. That's right. That's the idea behind the whole thing. We do know that primates typically are more expressive through their faces than humans are.
And the idea behind it or the explanation for it is that humans require eyes. more slow twitch muscles, the bigger muscles, to talk, to move our faces and our mouths to talk, which primates don't have to do. So we essentially, basically, our fast twitch muscles evolved into more slow twitch muscles. But we're still pretty expressive, so don't be too sad. Yeah, for sure.
If you've ever, you know, heard people say it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. First of all, lightly slap that person in the face with a feather. Next, move along and say, you know what? Prove it. Because I looked and I couldn't, you know, first of all, it's a very nuanced thing.
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Chapter 4: What types of smiles exist and what do they signify?
Like there are a lot of different smiles and a lot of different frowns. Yeah, that's a big point. And each of those different ones, like, you know, takes different muscles to make those. So for someone just to sort of flatly say. you know, it takes 22 muscles to, uh, smile and a hundred to frown. Uh, that that's, I can't, couldn't find anything that could verify that as true.
Uh, or like, I guess the message that they're sending is don't use your muscles. It's better to not use your muscles. Right. Why bother? Just smile. Yeah, it's funny. I looked all over, too, and all I could find were dentists' websites, which were pretty confident about that. That's right. Well, four out of five were.
But you said that your smiles all include muscles, and not just yours, Chuck, but all people's. That's right. And it includes a very particular muscle, I think one on each side, the zygomaticus major. These actually pull the sides of your mouth up. So I guess the Joker, when his face was slashed, it somehow made his zygomatic major constantly contracted. That's right.
I just want to say, I'm not sure what's wrong with me right now. I realize that I'm stammering, having a lot of trouble. Hopefully my brain will reset while you're talking next now. Oh, I haven't noticed anything. I think you're doing great. So there are actual people who, and boy, they've done a lot of research on smiling and stuff as we go.
Like you'll probably be astounded at how much time and money people have put into this kind of thing. But they have done research and actually sort of like coded the face and the system of muscles. So they know like what each group does, the facial action coding system, what it's called, the facts, just the facts.
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Chapter 5: How does smiling relate to happiness according to research?
I'm going with faces. Uh, yeah, they couldn't come up with any. I think it's implied. Okay. I'm going to go with just the faces then. Okay. So they, like I said, they made various codes for these muscle movements and assigned like names to them. And they know that all smiles involve action unit 12, which is both of those zygomaticus major muscles contracting.
And, you know, you said they raise them up or they also raise them out because you'll see when you smile, your smile, your mouth gets wider as well. And the whole world smiles with you. That's right. But if you're really happy and you're not, and we'll talk about the different kinds of smiles, like including fake smiles.
But if you're really genuinely happy with something and smiling from joy or, you know, being alive, that means your eyes are involved. And that is action unit six. Yes. So a couple of things here. Action Unit 12, I think, is the pinnacle of band names that we've ever covered. It's pretty darn good. Not only is it a great name, if you dig into what it means, you're talking about Smiling.
It's the name for Smiling. So that's pretty awesome. But it also has a built-in abbreviation that's great, too. AU12. Maybe even AU12. Right. Oh, yeah. So it's got on a logo or whatever. I really genuinely think that is the best band name we've ever stumbled upon. So did that just unseed Frozen Poop Knife? I think so.
Chapter 6: What are the psychological effects of forced smiling?
They could go on tour together. Does that mean we retire this bit? I don't know, Chuck. It's possible. Well, here's the deal. I think if we don't retire it, we will just have to mention almost every time from now on, like, but it's no AU-12. Okay. Okay. But, yes, all apologies to Frozen Poopknife. We'll never forget you, and we'll bring you up still. Yeah, they just kicked over their kick drum.
So, no, that was my bicep. So if you take Action Unit 12 and Action Unit 6 together, that's what's known as the Duchenne smile. And we definitely talked about Guillaume Duchenne in our Can Smiling Make You Happy episode, right? Yeah, and in fact, I think we called him Duchenne because the translator spelled it wacky. How? Oh, I mean, different things. Kane, K-A-I-N-E, Shane, S-H-A-N-E.
It's two different names. Yeah, it's, you know, go AI translator, I guess. Yeah, but we're going to go with Guillaume Duchesne this time, who is a French neurologist. He also was dabbling with electricity and photography. I saw that he basically existed at this neat crossroad of three emergent sciences that were coming out at the same time. This guy put them all to use.
And he stimulated people's facial muscles with electricity. There's an extensive set of photographs of him doing this to this poor guy. And this guy's making all these weird facial expressions and Duchenne is coding all of them. But it's kind of hysterical to think that like this guy's not purposely making these.
He's being zapped with electricity and that's what's making them because the correct muscle combination is being zapped right then by Duchenne. Yeah, that's pretty funny stuff.
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Chapter 7: How do cultural differences influence the perception of smiles?
So he claimed, and this was sort of a, and I think people thought this was true for a while, was this notion that you can tell a fake smile by the eyes, and that's sort of the dead giveaway.
And he may have, not reinforced it, but he may have sort of planted that seed when he said that the orbicularis oculi, which is action unit six that we talked about, the eyes, that would only contract due to the sweet emotions of the soul, which is a very nice thing to say, but it turns out that's probably not true.
No, people can, including Tyra Banks, can make yourself, or make themselves, I'm sorry, smile with their eyes. But there does seem to be some disagreement on whether that can fully be, ever fully be reproduced voluntarily. And I like to think that it can't be, that there's still some smile out there that's so genuine that it can't voluntarily be reproduced fully.
Yeah, I think what the deal is, is there are some people who are probably so good at the fake smile that you just don't realize it. Yeah, beware of those people. But both of those things can be true. I think what you said is definitely true. Thanks, man. I want to say one other thing about AU6, Action Unit 6. Mm-hmm.
If you go and look at the faces, codings, or facts, it's just like strips of like the mouth or the eyes or something like that. And for Action Unit 6, it is a strip of my eyes. It is very clearly somebody took my photo and just cut out the eyes. Wow. And is just showing the eyes. It looks exactly like my eyes, dude. You should go look. Send me a screenshot. I'm not going to look it up. Okay.
I will eventually. That's the agreement we came to. Okay, I think that's fair enough. To guys who do research for a living, you can't make the other one look anything up. No, we just send screenshots. So if we're talking about evolution, it's a pretty human thing to just be alive in the world and smile because you're feeling good and having a good day.
If you look at somebody from the primate kingdom and you see that teeth, like, man, I've seen those chimpanzees bear those teeth.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of smiling on social interactions?
And everyone's like, oh, they're so happy. And that's actually not what they're trying to say to you. And it doesn't mean they're trying to kill you right then either. Um, but it's a sign of submission apparently. Um, I don't know. I always, I didn't never took it as a, they, they always look stressed out to me. Like when I see a chimpanzee bear their teeth like that. Yeah, I've seen them.
It depends on, I think it depends on the rest of the face because I can bring to mind images of chimps doing that. The one I bring to mind more is Clyde from Every Which Way But Loose doing that, the orangutan. Yeah, man. He definitely did that and he didn't seem stressed out, but they definitely played it like he was laughing or something like that. And he surely wasn't. Yeah, for sure.
One of the things about that, though, Chuck, is smiling through submission. That is that still survived into humans for sure. Like that is something that we do not just to say, like, you're an alpha, I'm a beta, but also to say, like, hey, I just want to get along. No, no stress over here. Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, to basically not be tense.
Or if an awkward pause comes, both people might kind of smile or something like that. All of that is essentially the same thing as a chimp smiling to signal submission. Yeah, for sure.
There was a paper in 1979, a pretty classic smiling paper, where these psychologists, Robert Kraut and Robert Johnston, they were notating how people reacted when they went bowling together and found they were more likely to smile when just like hanging out and talking than after getting a strike, which like that totally tracks because like when you get a strike, you're supposed to act cool.
Like you meant to do that. You're not supposed to turn around and go. Yeah. Right. For sure. I read a little more about that study. One participant, Jesus, never smiled. And another participant, an Amish man named Ishmael, smiled almost constantly.
Well, I think what we might want to talk about a little bit, and I know we've covered this before, was baby smiling, because it's about one of the cutest darn things in the world, is when you see a little baby smile at you. That does happen very early.
Very newborn infants can smile, but those are sort of just random smiles, like they may have farted or something and are smiling, not because it's funny. They'll learn that a little bit later. And not because they lit it on fire. They'll learn that probably in their tween years. That's dangerous. Is it really? I've always heard. Why not? He never lit a fart.
I have, but I just escaped by the skin of my teeth. It's usually just sort of a random occurrence when a very newborn baby smiles. About four to six weeks, they start smiling when they wake up and they see you or hear you, as we'll see. But it's still sort of indiscriminate.
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