There’s a video over at TED that has received over 1.2 million views entitled, The Hidden Power of Smiling by Ron Gutman. It’s only 7 1/2 minutes long, so it’s worth a quick view (below) if you haven’t already seen it.
The premise of the video is simple — smiling can help you lead a happier, healthier life and lead to all sorts of positive outcomes. The research even says so!
The problem? Mr. Gutman has done what a lot of laypeople do — confused correlation with causation, press releases with scientific studies, and interpreted research results in a way the researchers themselves never did.
For good reason — longitudinal and historical research (the type Gutman cites time and time again in his presentation) generally can rarely speak to causation.
So while it’s good for a engaging soundbite at TED (and a followup book), it’s also dead wrong and an example of someone promulgating science at the behest of a “feel good” finding.
So let’s look at the research…
The first study is about a set of researchers (( Harker, LeeAnne Keltner, Dacher (2001). Expressions of positive emotion in women’s college yearbook pictures and their relationship to personality and life outcomes across adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 112-124.)) who had subjects look at yearbook pictures (only of women, by the way), and then examined those yearbook pictures’ subjects 30 years later to see how their lives turned out.
Researchers found that, “Consistent with recent accounts of positive emotion, individual differences in women’s positive emotional expression in their college yearbook photos related to (a) stable aspects of personality and change in certain traits over time, (b) observers’ judgments of the women’s personalities and their responses to these women, and (c) life outcomes measured up to 30 years later.”
That’s cool and all. But nowhere did the researchers mistake a smile for causing the positive life outcomes 30 years later:
Finally, the nature of the longitudinal design allowed us to say little about the specific processes by which positive emotional expression influences the life course.
Indeed, it’s fairly ridiculous to even suggest that a researcher could account for all possible alternative variables, and narrow it down to, “Women who smiled the most were happiest 30 years later, therefore the smile caused or directly contributed to women’s happiness.”
Next up is Gutman’s reference to the 2010 study ((Abel, Ernest L. Kruger, Michael L. (2010). Smile intensity in photographs predicts longevity. Psychological Science, 21, 542-544.)) that looked at baseball cards and how long the players lived. Researchers found those players with the biggest smiles lived the longest, which Gutman faithfully notes:
The researchers found that the span of a player’s smile could actually predict the span of his life.
What the researchers actually found is a simple correlation between a photograph’s smile and the player’s longevity. Since a baseball photograph — like a yearbook photo — is a staged photograph, it’s hard to understand what this might have to do with real life, and spontaneous, natural smiling.
It’s not like someone who forces themselves to smile is going to add years on to their life. It’s the underlying emotional disposition, which the researchers themselves made sure to emphasize:
To the extent that smile intensity reflects an underlying emotional disposition, the results of this study are congruent with those of other studies demonstrating that emotions have a positive relationship with mental health, physical health, and longevity.
Smiling itself isn’t the key factor — it’s what the smile represents in the underlying person. If you’re unhappy and look at this video and think, “Wow, if I just force myself to smile more often, I’ll be better,” you’re going to be in for a sorry disappointment.
Gutman nears the end of his talk by referring to a “study” conducted by the British Dental Health Foundation and conducted by HP, maker of digital cameras and photo printers (neither of which he mentions in his talk). This study — never published in a journal and going solely from a press release on a website — purportedly found that a smile is “worth” 2,000 bars of chocolate or £16,000 in cash. Gutman is happy to just repeat these data, without any critical analysis. Because, after all, they make for a good, sexy TED presentation.
Last, he ends with the findings from a 10-year old book about the therapeutic effects of smiling. ((Abel, Millicent H. Hester, Rebecca. (2002). The therapeutic effects of smiling. In: An empirical reflection on the smile. Abel, Millicent H. (Ed.); Lewiston, NY, US: Edwin Mellen Press, 217-253. )) Even if we believe everything this book says, it’s all based upon voluntary, spontaneous smiling — not forcing yourself to smile because you know it may be “healthier” for you.
There are also tons of research on smiling specifically related to age and gender that Gutman couldn’t cover (given his time constraints), but which clearly suggest that the research is a little more complex than, “Smiling will help improve your life.”
Furthermore, none of the studies Gutman cites have been replicated. This means their results are not scientifically robust — certainly not so robust one should be detailing them to a general audience as a guidebook to the way you should live your life.
I can’t help but wonder if this video couldn’t have been more accurately entitled, “Happy people — who tend to naturally smile more — have better, longer lives” — something any psychologist could’ve told you in the first place.
I’m sure Ron Gutman is a good, well-meaning guy. He comes across as someone who is likeable and enjoys smiling. But from his presentation, he also suggests a simple reading of the research that confuses peer-reviewed journal research with press releases, and correlation with causation — basic but serious flaws that undermine his entire message. ((Here’s a tiny side-note as well. The HealthTap blog used to allow comments, and I actually commented on this entry after it was published. But the entry is now devoid of any comments, which I can’t help but be disappointed by.))
Because smiling is simply a symptom of happiness and well-being — not the other way around.
Ron Gutman: The hidden power of smiling
7 comments
I felt there needed to be a connection in his attempt to the growing popularity of laughter therapy, in which creating the emotional state does in fact contribute to short and long term emotional stability.
Also congruent is this study of faces before and after a month of meditation:
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-3391/Before-and-After-Photos-A-Month-of-Meditation.html
Which would be a subtle and simple enough study even if empirically flawed and gimmicky.
I think what is being said in these comments on Ron is that his premise is dead wrong based on the data he was using. Fair game.
I am forming these comments without having made it through the original TED talk. I would suspect his premise would prove true for many people on a basic enough level, but it is true that TED talks need not turn into casual self-help assemblages.
That being said, glad to have found this article. In my ambitions of combining ideas both scientific and artistic in my non-fiction and fictional musings, quite the layperson yet, I’m glad to experience this rigorous critique. Thanks for reading.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg. The Dinosaur. I had heard some time ago of the chemicals released when smiling. I was on my way to work and grumpy so I gave it a shot. I was alone in my car smiling as wide as I could. I thought of how I must look to others and began laughing. I was no longer grumpy.
I had not wanted to smile. But the conscious act of smiling caused me to reflect on positive thoughts.
We are too complex to be definitive either way.
🙂
Your statement “Smiling itself isn’t the Key Factor caught my eye as I am a smiler a big smiler I smile more than most.
I was in a car accident a few years ago and my neck and shoulder were giving me a lot of pain.
I am not a person that usually complains about much of anything and do not take meds for pain, and I had stopped smiling. I really had not noticed at first that I had stopped smiling it was a realization one day at a friends house.
I said you know I don’t remember the last time I smiled, and I started to smile as I sat on the couch and as my smile grew and the more heart felt my smile was I could not feel the pain as badly as when I was not smiling.
So, I decided to put my smile to the test since then. Any time a negative situation arises in my life I put my smile to work and I have found that when I smile negativity can not take hold.
I broke my foot last year and I did not take one day off I worked 5 days a week on my feet everyday. I did use the elevator more than the stairs and before the break never used the elevator. My recovery was fast and no meds were needed.
Now, it might just be me
and maybe I am a different smiler than most
but, I do profess to everyone in my family and people I meet when depressed, or in pain or faced with troubles SMILE…make it a heartfelt SMILE and negativity will have a hard time taking over their life.
The saying LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE
I do believe helps
but, It is the Smile that is the medicine
and I have been toying with writing about my experience, but again maybe its just me..
Thanks for the great research and for emphasizing the common confusion between causation and correlation! I knew Ron while he was at business school at Stanford and generally found him to be a very likable guy who would never let causation (or his own responsibility for an idea) get in the way of him taking credit.
Other people have had slightly more negative views: http://deliberateambiguity.typepad.com/blog/2009/01/my-wellsphere-saga-and-the-recent-acquisition.html.
With respect, I feel your article on smiling is typical of the mainstream scientific health community. In my own experience it is obvious that mechanically raising the corners of my lips makes me feel good: in other words, smiling makes me happy.
Having done this, there may still be the thought “this is phony”, but so what? This is just the mechanical past trying to reassert itself. When I don’t take it seriously and keep smiling, particularly while aware of the overall feeling of my body, the thought eventually dies.
I’ve had enough of scientists coming to absolute conclusions and then handing them down, priest -like, to everyone else. Life is spontaneous and I love it.
Thanks so much for this article. Just read in a book the stat about seeing a child smile gives you the same happiness as 2000 bars of chocolate and couldn’t find any original research to back it up in psycINFO, Google Scholar, or really anywhere on the web. The link to the press release is dead.
To SyriusB who commented that scientists shouldn’t be such killjoys, I respectfully say that people who lie and/or make invalid claims cause a deterioration in trust and the ability to agree on facts and truth.
This year Ron Gutman was fired from his position as CEO for abusive treatment of his staff (https://www.recode.net/2018/5/1/17306084/ron-gutman-fired-healthtap-investors-venture-capitalists).