Does smiling unconsciously make negative memories feel less sad?
Forcing an unconscious smile while remembering a sad story reduces how negative that memory feels later without hurting factual recall of the event.
Source
Embodied memory: unconscious smiling modulates emotional evaluation of episodic memories
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Pen-in-teeth (smile) vs lips/non-dominant hold while reading a negative text; emotion ratings immediately and 24 h later
- N
- N=84 · 41 men, 43 women; mean age 23.2; University of Lausanne undergraduates
- Population
- Healthy French-speaking undergraduate students
- Outcome
- Emotional evaluation of a negative episodic text immediately and after 24 hours under unconscious smiling vs control facial postures
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Inspect source passages
Does smiling unconsciously make negative memories feel less sad?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Eighty-four healthy undergraduate students participated in the study
Eighty-four healthy, French-speaking undergraduate students (41 males and 43 females, mean age 23.2 ± 0.54 SEM) were recruited at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
The study split participants into three experimental groups
Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three following experimental groups.
What they did
The researchers split Eighty-four healthy undergraduate students into three experimental groups. Participants read a sad story, then returned approximately 24 h later to complete drawing tasks that reactivated the memory. During reactivation, the experimental group held a pen between their teeth to trigger an unconscious smile, while control groups held it between their lips or in their hand. After a 2-min delay, they rated their emotions and memory of the story again.
What they found
Unconsciously smiling during memory reactivation significantly decreased the negative emotional evaluation of the story compared to the initial rating. This physical manipulation did not affect how well participants remembered factual details, nor did it change their general mood. Interestingly, the positive effect on memory evaluation occurred even though the smiling group found the pen-holding task more difficult and unpleasant than the control group.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The study does not show if the shift in emotional tone is permanent, as the final memory test occurred only a 2-min delay after the facial manipulation. It cannot rule out whether a full 24-h delay is required to permanently lock in this new emotional evaluation. Additionally, the sample was limited to healthy young university students, meaning the results might not automatically apply to clinical populations suffering from severe trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Key terms
- Reconsolidation
- The process where retrieved memories temporarily enter a fragile state and must be stabilized again, allowing them to be updated.
- Facial feedback hypothesis
- The theory that sensory input from facial muscle movements can directly influence or trigger corresponding emotional experiences.
- Somatic markers
- Bodily states and physiological changes, like heart rate or muscle tension, associated with past emotional experiences that help guide current decision-making and memory.
- Embodied cognition
- A theory suggesting that cognitive processes and mental representations are deeply influenced by the physical state of the body.
- Episodic memory
- The conscious recollection of specific personal experiences, events, and situations from the past, including details about what happened.
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Common questions
Did the participants know they were smiling?
No, the researchers used a cover story about multitasking and asked participants to hold a pen between their teeth, which naturally contracts the smiling muscles without them realizing the purpose.
Did the physical difficulty of holding the pen ruin the positive emotional effect?
No, even though the smiling group found holding the pen in their mouth more difficult and unpleasant than using their hand, they still rated the sad memory less negatively.
Does this mean smiling can cure traumatic memories forever?
Not necessarily, because this study only tested participants' memory ratings a 2-min delay after the smiling exercise, so future research is needed to see if the emotional change lasts long-term.
Did the smiling manipulation make people feel happier overall?
No, the positive shift was specific to how they evaluated the sad story; their general positive and negative emotions remained unchanged after the task.
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