The Definitive Book of Body Language - Barbara Pease [27]
Drop-Jaw Smile with an attempt
to fake smiling eyes
A Drop-Jaw Smile where only the jaw
is lowered to feign enjoyment
4. Sideways-Looking-Up Smile
With the head turned down and away while looking up with a Tight-Lipped Smile, the smiler looks juvenile, playful, and secretive. This coy smile has been shown to be men's favorite everywhere, because when a woman does it, it engenders parental male feelings, making men want to protect and care for females. This is one of the smiles Princess Diana used to captivate the hearts of people everywhere.
Diana's Sideways-Looking-Up Smile had a
powerful effect on both men and women
This smile made men want to protect her, and made women want to be like her. Not surprisingly, this smile is a regular in women's courtship repertoire for attracting men, as it's read by men as seductive and is a powerful “come-on” signal. This is the same smile now used by Prince William, which not only has the effect of winning people's affection but also reminds them of Diana.
5. The George W. Bush Grin
President George W. Bush always has a permanent smirk on his face. Ray Birdwhistell found that smiling among middle-class people is most common in Atlanta, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, and most of Texas. Bush is a Texan and they smile more than most other Americans. As a result, in Texas, an unsmiling individual might be asked if he was “angry about something,” while in New York, the smiler might be asked, “What's so funny?” President Jimmy Carter was also a Southerner who smiled all the time. This worried the Northerners who feared that he knew something they didn't.
Smile constantly. Everyone will
wonder what you've been up to.
Why Laughter Is the Best Medicine
As with smiling, when laughter is incorporated as a permanent part of who you are, it attracts friends, improves health, and extends life. When we laugh, every organ in the body is affected in a positive way. Our breathing quickens, which exercises the diaphragm, neck, stomach, face, and shoulders. Laughter increases the amount of oxygen in the blood, which not only helps healing and improves circulation, it also expands the blood vessels close to the skin's surface. This is why people go red in the face when they laugh. It can also lower the heart rate, dilate the arteries, stimulate the appetite, and burn up calories.
Neurologist Henri Rubenstein found that one minute of solid laughter provides up to forty-five minutes of subsequent relaxation. Professor William Fry at Stanford University reported that one hundred laughs will give your body an aerobic workout equal to that of a ten-minute session on a rowing machine. Medically speaking, this is why a damn good laugh is damn good for you.
The older we become, the more serious we become
about life. An adult laughs an average of fifteen times a day
a preschooler laughs an average of four hundred times.
Why You Should Take Laughter Seriously
Research shows that people who laugh or smile, even when they don't feel especially happy, make part of the “happy zone” in the brain's left hemisphere surge with electrical activity. In one of his numerous studies on laughter, Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, hooked subjects up to EEG (electroencephalograph) machines, which measure brain-wave activity, and showed them funny movies. Smiling made their happy zones click wildly. He proved that intentionally producing smiles and laughter moves brain activity toward spontaneous happiness.
Arnie Cann, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, discovered that humor has a positive impact in counteracting stress. Cann led an experiment with people who were showing early signs