Happiness means something different to every person. Some people find happiness through their successes, some from religion, some from family etc. There is an infinite number of ways to make someone happy. The most common way that people vision happiness is with someone who has a smile on their face. Research has shown that something as simple as smiling can lead to happiness. I have personally noticed that I am happier when the people around me are happy, but have never really thought about how smiling affects myself.

Charles Darwin originally hypothesized that smiling can intensify a person’s pleasure. There is still not  proven solution to this hypothesis. In a more recent study, a group of randomly selected subjects were split in half. Half were told to hold a pen in their lips tightly to inhibit smiling while the other half were told to hold the pen at the front of their teeth to activate muscles used to smile. Each group was told to rate how funny a cartoon is while having the pen in their mouth. The group who had the pen in their lips found the cartoon to be funnier than the group who had the pen in their teeth.

These results show that the act of smiling can cause a person to be happier, but the study cannot confirm this hypothesis. There is a lot of factors that can change these results. The ages of the the subjects were not stated. Also, the gender ratio was not specified of the subjects. Younger males would find cartoons funnier than the average middle-aged person.

While reading about these studies, I have forced myself to smile and frown repeatedly. Although there is not a proven answer to this hypothesis, I personally believe that smiling causes your brain to think of happy memories and frowning causes your brain to think about sad ones.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/10/25/health-blog-video-is-it-true-smiling-improves-your-mood/

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/18/science/a-feel-good-theory-a-smile-affects-mood.html