Mental Muscles

Your facial expressions may help people read you like a book, revealing your inner thoughts and feelings, but it turns out your face's expressivity also affects your ability to understand written language as it relates to emotions.

Your facial expressions may help people read you like a book, revealing your inner thoughts and feelings, but it turns out your face's expressivity also affects your ability to understand written language as it relates to emotions.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted a study with 40 volunteers before and after they had undergone injections of Botox, a powerful nerve poison used to deactivate muscles in the forehead that cause frowning. They found that the inability to frown caused participants to be less able to understand negative emotions.

Specifically, the participants were asked to read a series of statements that were angry, sad or happy, and push a button when they finished reading each statement — an indication they comprehended the sentence's meaning. The results showed no change in the time needed to understand the happy sentences, but after Botox treatment, subjects took more time to read the angry and sad sentences. Although the time difference was small, it was significant, study author David Havas said. And it could not be attributed to changes in the participants' moods.

"There is a long-standing idea in psychology called the facial feedback hypothesis," Havas said. "Essentially, it says when you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you. It's an old song, but it's right. This study suggests the opposite: When you're not frowning, the world seems less angry and less sad."

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