When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you

Contagious smiling (and frowning and scowling and so on) is the basis of reading others' emotions and registering how you should, in turn, feel.

We tend to mimic the smiles or frowns of others because it helps us better understand what other people are feeling, allowing us to respond appropriately.

Evidence shows that an instinct for facial mimicry allows us to empathize with and even experience other people's feelings.

“Facial mimicry certainly plays some role, and perhaps a key role, in understanding other people’s emotional states,” Dr. Kevin Ochsner

A person's ability to recognize and "share" others' emotions can be inhibited when they can't mimic faces, even from something as simple as long-term pacifier use.

you mimic their expression unconsciously, which then tells your brain what to feel. All this happens in a few hundred milliseconds.

We are unconsciously learning things by what we see and that's why infants mimic their parents behavior. When they smile to them, they smile back.

Each time you smile, you throw a little feel-good party in your brain. The act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness.

smiling activates the release of neuropeptides that work toward fighting off stress.

the serotonin release brought on by your smile serves as an anti-depressant/mood lifter.

when you view a person smiling, you actually feel rewarded.

When you smile,you are creating a symbiotic relationship that allows both of you to release feel-good chemicals in your brain, activate reward centers, make you both more attractive, and increase the chances of you both living longer, healthier lives.

First stage: You see an expressive face You need to know what the expression means so you can react effectively.

Second stage: You simulate the facial expression Simulation uses the same areas of your brain that cause your facial expressions- it may therefore cause you to mimic the expression.

Third stage: The simulation tells you how it feels to make that expression The context or your knowledge about the expresser may have an influence.

This quick, automatic, and unconscious process allows you to connect the subtle emotion signals of others to your own emotion experiences.

Smiling makes us happier Smiling triggers a reduction in stress-enhancing hormones and increases the production of mood-enhancing hormones.

Even forcing a “fake” smile when you’re not truly feeling it has been shown to reduce stress and result in more positive feelings.

Genuine smiles might help people see eye-to-eye during interactions. People who often make genuine smiles may have an easier time convincing others to adopt their goals.

The world is simply a better place when you smile.

I think something will soon have to be done to protect people from hacking and blogging and lying and spreading rumors and chasing you down the street. Lives are wrecked that way.

It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached.

I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch.

Japanese naval officers in dress whites are frequent guests at Pearl Harbor's officers' mess and are very polite. They always were. Except, of course, for that little interval there between 1941 and 1945.

I was very much on the mathematical side, where you probably do your best work before you're forty-five. Having passed that significant date, I thought I would do something else.

My top priority for 2012 will be to make a renewed push for women's economic empowerment and political participation.

I can understand Communism, but not Socialism.

I try to avoid conflict. I don't want people to be unhappy.

The only whole heart is a broken one because it lets the light in.

For my Vienna is as different from what they call Vienna now as the quick is different from the dead.

Negotiation builds a team as well as a set of requirements.

If you go too fast you might not notice everything. On the other hand you dont want to be late.

We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.

I'm a big crier in general. The right life insurance commercial will take me out for a couple of days. I watched Hillary Clinton on the news the other day, and I got choked up by Hillary Clinton.

What really scares me is Alzheimer's or premature senility, losing that ability to read and enjoy and to write. And you do it, and some days maybe aren't so good, and then some days, you really catch a wave, and it's as good as it ever was.

Hypocrites get offended by the truth.

Let your hook be always cast. In the pool where you least expect it, will be fish.

I drive the car pool - I show up with no makeup and drive the kids to school.

I think first impressions are important when you pick up a script.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

You never know why something works or doesn't.

Freedom of speech gives you the right to stay silent.

I don't know the right number of immigrants to let in.

I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better.