What happens if you smile a lot

The Goods. TIME Shop. Press Room. The Most Influential People. American Voices. The Breakdown. Finding Home. The Influencers. Longevity Next Generation Leaders. Person of the Year. The researchers found that smiling frequently may actually make people feel worse if they're sort of faking it — grinning even though they feel down.

When people force themselves to smile because they hope to feel better or they do it just to hide their negative emotions, this strategy may backfire. The bottom line of the study: Whether a wide grin will hurt your emotional well-being depends on the motivation behind it, the researchers said.

In the latter scenario, people may associate the acts of smiling not only with feeling happy, but also with feeling unhappy, he said. Read News. Become a Fan. Moms and Babies. View Pregnancy Services. Patient Stories. Read Stories. Share your story with us. The value of the First and Last Name field is not valid. Email Enter a valid e-mail address. However, the wonders of smiling also affect the people around you. In fact, in many psychological tests, people are more likely to feel better about someone who appears with a smile as opposed to a person who has a neutral expression on their face.

This is because a person is seen as more attractive when they smile. People tend to behave differently around smiling, attractive people. Studies in Penn State University have found that smiling people appear immediately as more trustworthy, relatable, courteous and reliable. People trust you more as it gives you the appearance of sincerity and joy, and people are drawn to these qualities in a person.

Furthermore, face research has reported in that when tested, both men and women were far more likely to gravitate towards images of people who are smiling, as opposed to those who did not. Smiling is also rather contagious.