Masks Are Causing Our Smiles to Evolve
The rise of the ‘smize’
All smiles are not created equal: We have different smiles for different situations. There are spontaneous smiles that indicate true joy. And then there are “social smiles,” the ones people use to communicate — like the no-you-go-first smile at the grocery line, the hello-neighbor smile when you pass someone you recognize on a hiking path, the hey-good-lookin’ smile when you spot someone attractive you’d like to know better, and the sorry-not-sorry smile when you one-up a rival.
Most of those don’t have much to do with happiness. People smile to communicate social acceptance, to set others at ease, or even to express dominance. But it’s impossible to pull off any of these social smiles when you’re wearing a mask over your mouth and nose to reduce the risk of spreading Covid-19.
Walking around in a mask and sunglasses makes many people feel invisible. “There’s a large experience of deindividuation.”
So given the need to mask up, we have to adjust our facial expressions. One of the ways many people are doing this? Meet the Duchenne smile, named after French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne. A photographer and scientist, Duchenne did pioneering research on…
