INSPIRATIONAL STORY OF THE WEEK 9-7-2021

A Certain Kind of Smiling Can Repair Relationships That Have Been Damaged by Mistrust

Reprinted from Good News Network website...

A smile is the key to a thousand doors, but deploying it in every situation without mastery of its use is dangerous, says a new social science study.

They say it takes 400 muscles to smile, well scientists at Queen’s University Belfast found that subtle differences in the way in which a person smiled had not-so-subtle impacts on the opinions which the test participants had about the smiler.

“Smiling at another person does not always lead to trust and cooperation,” said Dr. Stephanie Carpenter from the University of Michigan, a co-author of the study. “Subtle differences in a smile can have a real impact on whether people trust each other and choose to cooperate. In fact, the way you smile in a good or bad situation can impact whether people trust you.”<