Facial Expression and Moderated Self-Esteem in Determining Happiness

Facial Expression and Moderated Self-Esteem in Determining Happiness

Did you know that by simply mimicking a smile you can reduce how you perceive pain? The pain of a vaccine shot is perceived as 40% less painful when mimicking a smile (Pressman et al., 2021)

We can boost our mood with something as little as change in perception.

Facial Expression: Duchenne Smile

• Construct definition
  • Facial Expression: a visual cue expressing communication through the face without using auditory cues
    • Duchenne smile condition: facial expression with smile of the mouth reaching the eyes to make the outer parts of eyes wrinkle to crow’s feet, eyes open and looking forward ahead
• Operational definition:
  • Individual modeling facial expression is a young adult female -individual gave consent and was not compensated
  • Facial expression manipulated by following construct definition of a Duchenne smile facial expression and was represented as a static video with no added audio that is 7 seconds in length

Facial Expression: Nuetral

• Construct definition
  • Facial Expression: a visual cue expressing communication through the face without using auditory cues
  • Neutral expression condition: facial expression with relaxed facial muscles, no smiling or frowning, mouth is closed, eyes open and looking forward ahead
• Operational definition
  • Individual modeling facial expression is a young adult female -individual gave consent and was not compensated
  • Facial expression manipulated by following construct definition of a a neutral facial expression and was represented as a static video with no added audio that is 7 seconds in length

Self-Esteem

• Construct definition
  • Self-Esteem: how an individual perceives themselves and their worth, such as how they feel in levels of happiness or discontentment in assessing their value and self-confidence
• Operational definition
  • Variable manipulated by being added in two levels of high self-esteem and low-self esteem
  • These two levels (high and low self-esteem) were added as separate notes for both the Duchenne smile condition and the neutral facial expression condition photo-videos, making for 4 total conditions: -Duchenne smile with low self-esteem -Duchenne smile with high self-esteem -neutral expression with low self-esteem -neutral expression with high self-esteem
  • Each of the notes were added as titles underneath each facial expression condition

Self Perceived Happiness

• Construct definition
  • Self perceived happiness: feeling contentment and/or joy, and satisfied with oneself
• Operational definition
  • Variable measured by analyzing average happiness scores of each condition of participants to compare with one another
  • happiness scores measured using a 6 question happiness questionnaire with a scale of 1-4, strongly agree to strongly disagree where participants answer the scale based on each statement-question

Hypotheses

Results Figure

My Figure

Discussion

• 1 Limitation:
  • Lack of descriptive language: if we defined each variable for the participants with specific language and the construct definitions, perhaps there would be an increase in accurate answering or thought put into completing the happiness questionnaire
• 1 Strength:
  • Good control with a lab setting: good internal validity, format of questions and conditions are controlled to minimize confounding variables for differences in participant environment; directions were the same for each participant
• 1 Implication:
  • there could be stronger results if different combinations of facial expression and self-esteem levels are combined in figuring out happiness levels
  • perhaps with other combinations happiness could later be manipulated or created

Duchenne smiles combined with high self-esteem help aid happiness

• Perhaps by mimicking a smile or watching others smile who appear to have good self-esteem can help others to perceive less pain in medical procedures, like helping people better get over a fear of vaccine shots
• Further hope in improving mood and combating negative emotions

Reference

Pressman, S. D., Acevedo, A. M., Hammond, K. V., & Kraft-Feil, T. L. (2021). Smile (or grimace) through the pain? The effects of experimentally manipulated facial expressions on needle-injection responses. Emotion, 21(6), 1188–1203. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000913