How We Smile While Lying

Using a smile to conceal negative or genuine feelings can be a smart thing to avoid dispute or exposing honest feelings which can create problems. Ekman et al. conducted an experiment to know the difference between how people smile genuinely and how they smile when they are lying about pleasant feelings. 

47 student nurses were recruited for this study. They were videotaped while watching two short films. One short film was arousing pleasant feelings and another, arousing upsetting feelings.  Two scenarios were set to give their responses to an interviewer. In honest scenario, they were asked to discuss their honest feelings about film arousing pleasant feelings. 

In deceptive scenario, they had to convince interviewer that they experienced pleasant feelings while watching film arousing upsetting and depressing feelings.

Two types of smiles were distinguished as felt happy smiles and masking smiles. Felt happy smiles were identified by the activity of muscles around the eyes along with corners of mouth raised.

While masking smile is identified by raising corners of mouth only. It was found that when enjoyment was experienced, felt happy smiles occurred more often than masking smile. 

When subjects attempted to hide strong negative emotions, masking smile occurred more often than felt happy smiles. When you don’t see any activity around the eyes when someone is smiling; tell them you caught them lying and ask what is that they are hiding.

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Reference – Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen, University of California, San Francisco. Maureen O’Sullivan, University of San Francisco. 

Research paper name – Smiles When Lying. 

Published in – Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1988)

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