Is the facial feedback theory true

Emotions are a very basic part of the human experience, and expressing those emotions appropriately is a part of good mental health. We can show our emotions in many ways, but the quickest and most common way is through facial expressions. As it turns out, facial expressions may do more than showing others how we feel. Scientists have proposed the facial feedback hypothesis, suggesting that changing our facial expressions can also change our emotions. The facial feedback hypothesis states that our facial expressions affect our emotions.

Contracting muscles involved in facial expressions e. However, it is unresolved whether and how inhibiting facial expressions might weaken emotional experience. In the present study, participants watched positive and negative video clips while either inhibiting their facial expressions or not. When hypothesis awareness and effects of distraction were experimentally controlled, inhibiting facial expressions weakened some emotional experiences. After a stressful day, have you ever become aware of just how tightly you were clenching your jaw, furrowing your brow, or squinting your eyes?

Perhaps you've heard that you can brighten your mood just by faking a smile. The hypothesis, called the facial-feedback hypothesis, dates back to a study in which participants rated the humor of cartoons while inadvertently mimicking either a smile or a pout. The participants were simply asked to hold a pen in their mouths, either with their lips which pushes the face into a frown-like expression or their teeth which mimics a smile. The participants who used the pen to mimic a smile rated the cartoons as funnier. Now, a lab effort with 1, participants finds no evidence that such an effect exists.

The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial actions modulate subjective experiences of emotion. Using the voluntary facial action technique, in which the participants react with instruction induced smiles and frowns when exposed to positive and negative emotional pictures and then rate the pleasantness of these stimuli, four questions were addressed in the present study. The results in Experiment 1 demonstrated a feedback effect because participants experienced the stimuli as more pleasant during smiling as compared to when frowning. Finally, no difference in the intensity of produced feedback effect was found between smiling and frowning, and no difference in feedback effect was found between positive and negative emotions.