Smiling Makes You Happy

In what appears to be a case of cause and effect and cause: smiling makes us happy, which of course, makes us smile. That’s the suggestion of research written up in the Scientific American, suggesting that those recipients of botox treatments whose ability to frown is compromised are happier than people who can frown freely. Sciam reports that researchers at the University of Cardiff in Wales gave an anxiety and depression questionnaire to 25 females, half of whom had received frown-inhibiting
botox injections. The botox recipients reported feeling happier and
less anxious in general; and wait, there’s more: they did not report feeling
any more attractive, which suggests that the emotional effects were not
driven by a psychological boost that could come from the treatment’s
cosmetic nature.

The article cites a related study at the Technical University
of Munich in German, where researchers scanned botox recipients with fMRI machines while
asking them to mimic angry faces. They found that the botox subjects
had much lower activity in the brain circuits involved in emotional
processing and responses—in the amygdala, hypothal­amus and parts of
the brain stem—as compared with con­trols who had not received
treatment.

Read more in the Scientific American.