Does smiling not indicate happiness?
| Sep 8, 2018, 15:33 IST
A new study has now found that just smiling does not necessarily indicate that a person is happy. The study also found that a person seems to be happy when they're engaging with another person or a group of people. But the study further found that this was not always the case. A number of participants were made to sit alone in a room with a computer. They were then asked to answer a series of difficult geographical questions. Their facial expressions were then recorded as they answered each question.
Their spontaneous facial expressions were then analysed frame to frame to figure out how much they smiled when they interacted with the computer. "According to some researchers, a genuine smile reflects the inner state of cheerfulness or amusement." "Our study showed that in these Human-Computer Interaction experiments, smiling is not driven by happiness; it is associated with subjective engagement, which acts like a social fuel for smiling, even when socialising with a computer on your own," said the lead researcher.
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Their spontaneous facial expressions were then analysed frame to frame to figure out how much they smiled when they interacted with the computer. "According to some researchers, a genuine smile reflects the inner state of cheerfulness or amusement." "Our study showed that in these Human-Computer Interaction experiments, smiling is not driven by happiness; it is associated with subjective engagement, which acts like a social fuel for smiling, even when socialising with a computer on your own," said the lead researcher.
Stay tuned for more updates.