When a Smile Turns Ugly: My Review of TED Books’ “SMILE”

Is there such a thing as too much good cheer? I argue more or less that over at the new science e-book site Download The Universe, where in dismay I’ve reviewed the TED Book “SMILE: The Astonishing Power of a Simple Act.” As I noted last week, Download The Universe is a collaborative effort of several science writers rounded up by Carl Zimmer. Its main mission is to call attention to worthy science-y ebooks, and I picked this one out thinking it had nice potential. But I didn’t much like it.

 Mechanisms emerge. Smiling, Gutman tells us, sets up a feedback loop:

To glaze this donut, Gutman turns to science. He finds many studies but, apparently, few commas. Did you know, for instance, that “in two separate studies examining thousands of pictures taken from 1968 through 1993 and 1970 through 1999 researchers discovered that 55 percent to 60 percent of men and 80 percent of women smile in photos from pleasant public situations”? Me either.

Why do people smile so? Because “smiling makes us feel and look better, both to ourselves and to others.” It was about here that my frown began to turn to fury, for while Gutman had related this fact at least ten times already, I was only, my Kindle cruelly revealed, 62% of the way through the book, which was way too far and hardly far enough. Then, in case I’d forgotten this crucial message while checking my progress, he used the next sentence to tell me an eleventh time.

The glaze accrues. “Under certain conditions, when men see women smile at them they interpret that as a sign that the women think they are attractive.” Really? I would never have guessed. Lest I resist this news, however, Gutman offers a study showing that a women who smiles at male patrons as she enters a bar will get hit on far more often than she would if she simply made eye contact as she walked in — which to me seems a brave enough thing itself. Same goes in libraries, One researcher, in fact, “ended up marrying one of her test subjects who first approached her because of her smile!” Exclamation point his.

Scan studies too enter the picture, arriving as thin, obvious, inevitable, and alluring as a pharmaceutical sales rep at a doctor’s office. One fMRI study, for instance — of 28 moms, which is only a few more than the number of times Gutman mentions this effect — showed that mommy’s pleasure centers light up when baby smiles. Other scan studies show that a single smile can bring the brain as much pleasure as 2000 chocolate bars or $25,000. Someone tell the chocolate people they’re wildly underpricing. And for me, please hold the smile; I’ll take the cash.

What can we do with this information? Gutman has several suggestions. Smile. Smile at strangers. Smile at yourself. Smile the first thing on waking. Smile when you’re skydiving. Smile while you’re giving natural childbirth. Offers one smiley devotee, “I smiled through my natural, drug-free labor and fully believe it transformed the whole experience. I recommend smiling to all women going through childbirth.” I would love to have seen this woman recommend that to my wife as she was being wheeled down the hall for a c-section after 40 hours of labor and 4 hours of pushing. In fact, to test the astonishing power of this recommendation, I just now read it aloud to my wife. Her reaction makes me long to see this woman offer her this advice even now. She wouldn’t be smiling when she finished.