There is a saying: “Smile once, look ten years younger.” A new study has just exposed this saying as nonsense. The study showed that smiling faces look, on average, about one year older than faces with neutral expressions.
In the first experiment of this paper, the researchers recruited a group of participants and showed them 70 headshots, asking them to judge how old the people in the photos were. There were 35 male and 35 female faces, and the models’ actual average age was 25. Each photo actually came in two versions: one with a slight smile and one with a neutral expression. Every participant saw one of the two versions at random.
The result was that, among the age estimates given by participants, smiling faces were judged to be an average of one year older than neutral faces (smiling faces were judged to be around 28, while neutral faces were judged to be around 27).
The funny thing is, after looking at all the photos, the researchers asked participants to estimate the average ages they had just assigned to the smiling and neutral faces. The result: participants estimated the smiling faces at about 25.7 and the neutral faces at about 27.3. In other words, they fully believed the saying “Smile once, look ten years younger,” yet in practice they gave smiling faces the older age ratings.
The researchers speculated that smiling faces look older because smiling makes the wrinkles around the eyes more visible. In fact, the researchers had tested this idea before: once they digitally removed the wrinkles around the eyes of the smiling faces, the aging effect disappeared. To test the idea again, the researchers added a third expression in the second experiment—surprise—because a surprised expression tightens the muscles around the eyes and makes wrinkles less visible. So surprised faces should look even younger than neutral faces.
The experimental results were exactly as expected: participants gave surprised faces the lowest age ratings. Again, after viewing all the photos, the researchers asked participants to estimate the scores they had just given each type of face. The result was that they estimated the age ratings for surprised faces to be the same as for neutral faces. Once again, subjective beliefs and objective ratings came apart—only this time, there was no familiar saying like “Smile once, look ten years younger” to steer participants’ subjective judgments.
This study teaches us that if you want to smile without looking older, you’d better move the muscles around your eyes as little as possible. A smile with your mouth but not your eyes—that’s what people traditionally call a “professional smile.” In the trade, it also has another name: “the polite-but-wily smile.”
That kind of smile, although… very fake, does make you look young.
What? You don’t know how to smile politely without looking wily? Come on, look at the picture below and let Old Bai give you a standard demonstration—
References:
Christian Jarrett. Contrary to popular belief, smiling makes you look older. Research Digest.
Ganel, T., & Goodale, M. A. (2018). The effects of smiling on perceived age defy belief. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 25(2), 612-616.
Note
- This article in the “Psychology New Knowledge” series was written to accompany the relevant content of Zhichao Wei: Psychology New Knowledge. It was a short popular-science essay published on the now-closed platform “Fantuan”; the original link is no longer available.
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