The Definitive Book of Body Language (13 page)

When liars lie, the left side of the smile is
usually more pronounced than the right

We were commissioned by Australian Customs, in 1986, to help create a program to increase the number of seizures of illegal contraband and drugs being smuggled into Australia. Until that time, it had been assumed by law enforcement officers that liars increased their frequency of smiling when they were lying or under pressure. Our analysis of film of people who were intentionally told to lie showed the opposite—when the liars lied, they smiled less or not at all, regardless of culture. People who were innocent and telling the truth
increased
their smiling frequency when being honest. Because smiling is rooted in submission, the innocent people were attempting to appease their accusers, while the professional liars were reducing their smiles and other body signals. It's the same as when a police car pulls
up next to you at traffic lights—even though you haven't broken the law, the presence of the police is enough to make you feel guilty and start smiling. This highlights how fake smiling is controlled and should always be considered in the context of where it occurs.

What follows is a summary and an analysis of the common types of smiles that you're likely to see every day:

The lips are stretched tight across the face to form a straight line and the teeth are concealed. It sends the message that the smiler has a secret or a withheld opinion or attitude that they will not be sharing with you. It's a favorite of women who don't want to reveal that they don't like someone and is usually clearly read by other women as a rejection signal. Most men are oblivious to it.

The Tight-Lipped Smile shows she has a
secret and won't be sharing it with you

For example, one woman might say of another woman, “She's a very capable woman who knows what she wants,” followed by a Tight-Lipped Smile, rather than saying what she was really
thinking: “I think she's an aggressive, pushy bitch!” The Tight-Lipped Smile is also seen in magazine pictures of successful businessmen who are communicating, “I've got the secrets of success and you've got to try and guess what they are.” In these interviews, the men have a tendency to talk about principles of success, but rarely do they reveal the exact details of how they succeeded. Conversely, Richard Branson is always seen sporting a wide toothy smile and is happy to explain the exact details of his success because he knows that most people won't do it anyway.

Tony and Cherie Blair were “tight-lipped” about Cherie's last pregnancy

This smile shows opposite emotions on each side of the face. In picture A below, the right brain raises the left-side eyebrow, the left zygomatic muscles, and left cheek to produce one type of smile on the left side of the face, while the left brain pulls the same muscles downward on the right side to produce an angry frown. When you place a mirror down the middle of illustration A, at an angle of 90 degrees to reflect each side of the face, you produce two completely different faces with opposite emotions. Mirroring the right side of the face reveals picture B, which has a cheesy grin, while mirroring the left side reveals picture C, an angry frown.

The Twisted Smile is peculiar to the Western world and can only be done deliberately, which means it can send only one message—sarcasm.

This is a practiced smile where the lower jaw is simply dropped down to give the impression that the person is laughing or playful. This is a favorite of people such as The Joker in
Batman
, Bill Clinton, and Hugh Grant, all of whom use it to engender happy reactions in their audiences or to win more votes.

Drop-Jaw Smile with an attempt
to fake smiling eyes

A Drop-Jaw Smile where only the jaw
is lowered to feign enjoyment

With the head turned down and away while looking up with a Tight-Lipped Smile, the smiler looks juvenile, playful, and secretive. This coy smile has been shown to be men's favorite everywhere, because when a woman does it, it engenders parental male feelings, making men want to protect and care for females. This is one of the smiles Princess Diana used to captivate the hearts of people everywhere.

Diana's Sideways-Looking-Up Smile had a
powerful effect on both men and women

This smile made men want to protect her, and made women want to be like her. Not surprisingly, this smile is a regular in women's courtship repertoire for attracting men, as it's read by men as seductive and is a powerful “come-on” signal. This is the same smile now used by Prince William, which not only has the effect of winning people's affection but also reminds them of Diana.

President George W. Bush always has a permanent smirk on his face. Ray Birdwhistell found that smiling among middle-class people is most common in Atlanta, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, and most of Texas. Bush is a Texan and they smile more than most other Americans. As a result, in Texas, an unsmiling individual might be asked if he was “angry about something,” while in New York, the smiler might be asked, “What's so funny?” President Jimmy Carter was also a Southerner who smiled all the time. This worried the Northerners who feared that he knew something they didn't.

As with smiling, when laughter is incorporated as a permanent part of who you are, it attracts friends, improves health, and extends life. When we laugh, every organ in the body is affected in a positive way. Our breathing quickens, which exercises the diaphragm, neck, stomach, face, and shoulders. Laughter increases the amount of oxygen in the blood, which not only helps healing and improves circulation, it also expands the blood vessels close to the skin's surface. This is why people go red in the face when they laugh. It can also lower the heart rate, dilate the arteries, stimulate the appetite, and burn up calories.

Neurologist Henri Rubenstein found that one minute of solid laughter provides up to forty-five minutes of subsequent relaxation. Professor William Fry at Stanford University reported that one hundred laughs will give your body an aerobic workout equal to that of a ten-minute session on a rowing machine. Medically speaking, this is why a damn good laugh is damn good for you.

Research shows that people who laugh or smile, even when they don't feel especially happy, make part of the “happy zone” in the brain's left hemisphere surge with electrical activity. In one of his numerous studies on laughter, Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, hooked subjects up to EEG (electroencephalograph) machines, which measure brain-wave activity, and showed them funny movies. Smiling made their happy zones click wildly. He proved that intentionally producing smiles and laughter moves brain activity toward spontaneous happiness.

Arnie Cann, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, discovered that humor has a positive impact in counteracting stress. Cann led an experiment with people who were showing early signs of depression. Two groups watched videos over a three-week period. The group that watched comedy videos showed more improvement in their symptoms than did a control group that watched nonhumorous videos. He also found that people with ulcers frown more than people without ulcers. If you catch yourself frowning, practice putting your hand on your forehead when you talk, to train yourself out of it.