New research from San Francisco State University is thought to be the first to show that sighted and blind people use the same facial expressions in response to certain emotional states. By studying both sighted and blind Olympic athletes the researchers found that 85 percent of silver medalists, regardless of visual ability, showed the same “social smile”, where only the mouth smiles – compared with a “real” or Duchenne smile (named after the 19th century French neurologist who discovered that a smile which results from true happiness involves not only the mouth but also the eyes). “Individuals blind from birth could not have learned to control their emotions in this way through visual learning so there must be another mechanism,” said the researchers. This is why they believe that some facial expressions may be intrinsic, not learned.
Posts Tagged ‘happiness’
December 29, 2008
Some Facial Expressions Are Intrinsic, Not Learned »
December 9, 2008
Happiness can be infectious, and now researchers from the University of California San Diego say they can document it. By looking at years of data collected from the Framingham Heart Study, researchers looked at self-reported happiness ratings and found out that happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. The study found that you are 15% more likely to be happy if a direct connection is happy, 10% if a friend of a friend is happy, and 6% if it’s a friend of a friend of a friend. Sadness, too, can spread, albeit more slowly.
Happiness Is Now Scientifically Contagious »
Happiness can be infectious, and now researchers from the University of California San Diego say they can document it. By looking at years of data collected from the Framingham Heart Study, researchers looked at self-reported happiness ratings and found out that happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. The study found that you are 15% more likely to be happy if a direct connection is happy, 10% if a friend of a friend is happy, and 6% if it’s a friend of a friend of a friend. Sadness, too, can spread, albeit more slowly.About Daily Dose
Welcome to RightHealth Daily Dose! We feature the one health item you simply cannot afford to miss.
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Dr. Steven Chang, the author of DailyDose, is a staff physician with Kosmix RightHealth. Dr. Chang practices Family Medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where his medical interests include both pediatric and geriatric care, public health, gay and lesbian health, and sleep medicine. Dr. Chang trained at the Stanford University affiliated O'Connor Hospital, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health. He holds an M.D. from McGill University and a BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
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