Read Online The Definitive Book of Body Language by Barbara Pease, Allan Pease - Free Book Online

He pulled face muscles from many different angles to catalog and record which muscles caused which smiles. He discovered that smiles are controlled by two sets of muscles: the zygomatic major muscles, which run down the side of the face and connect to the corners of the mouth, and the orbicularis oculi, which pull the eyes back. The zygomatic majors pull the mouth back to expose the teeth and enlarge the cheeks, while the orbicularis oculi make the eyes narrow and cause “crow's feet.” These muscles are important to understand because the zygomatic majors are consciously controlled—in other words, they are used to produce false smiles of fake enjoyment to try to appear friendly or subordinate. The orbicularis oculi at the eyes act independently and reveal the true feelings of a genuine smile. So the first place to check the sincerity of a smile is to look for wrinkle lines beside the eyes.
    A natural smile produces characteristic

wrinkles around the eyes—insincere

people smile only with their mouth.
     
    In the enjoyment smile, not only are the lip corners pulled up, but the muscles around the eyes are contracted, while nonenjoyment smiles involve just the smiling lips.

     
    Which smile is fake?
False smiles pull back only the mouth, real smiles pull
back both the mouth and eyes
     
    Scientists can distinguish between genuine and fake smiles by using a coding system called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which was devised by Professor Paul Ekman of the University of California and Dr. Wallace V. Friesen of the University of Kentucky. Genuine smiles are generated by the unconscious brain, which means they are automatic. When you feel pleasure, signals pass through the part of your brain that processes emotion, making your mouth muscles move, your cheeks rise, your eyes crease up, and your eyebrows dip slightly.
    Photographers ask you to say “cheese” because this word

pulls back the zygomatic major muscles. But the result is

a false smile and an insincere-looking photograph.
     
    Lines around the eyes can also appear in intense fake smiles and the cheeks may bunch up, making it look as if the eyes are contracting and that the smile is genuine. But there are signs that distinguish these smiles from genuine ones. When a smileis genuine, the fleshy part of the eye between the eyebrow and the eyelid—the eye cover fold—moves downward and the ends of the eyebrows dip slightly

Smiling Is a Submission Signal
     
    Smiling and laughing are universally considered to be signals that show a person is happy We cry at birth, begin smiling at five weeks, and laughing starts between the fourth and fifth months. Babies quickly learn that crying gets our attention— and that smiling keeps us there. Recent research with our closest primate cousins, the chimpanzees, has shown that smiling serves an even deeper, more primitive purpose.
    To show they're aggressive, apes bare their lower fangs, warning that they can bite. Humans do exactly the same thing when they become aggressive, dropping or thrusting forward the lower lip because its main function is as a sheath to conceal the lower teeth. Chimpanzees have two types of smiles: one is an appeasement face, where one chimp shows submission to a dominant other. In this chimp smile—known as a “fear face”— the lower jaw opens to expose the teeth and the corners of the mouth are pulled back and down, and this resembles the human smile.

     
    A primate “fear face” (left) and a primate “play face”
     
    The other is a “play face,” where the teeth are exposed, the corners of the mouth and the eyes are drawn upward, and vocal sounds are made, similar to that of human laughing. In both cases, these smiles are used as submission gestures. The first communicates “I am not a threat because, as you can see, I'm fearful of you” and the other says “I am not a threat because, as you can see, I'm just like a playful child.” This is the same face pulled by a