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.

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.

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.

Just say no to drugs!

Public employee unions are hardly the only group involved in bare-knuckles politics. Businesses lobby fiercely, and executives make hefty campaign donations.

There are a whole bunch of structural and systemic factors we need to address in order to move away from the model in which women really are still dependent on men.

Most of my rings are not expensive at all; they're just things that remind me of people that gave 'em to me. And they all have their own stories, their own meanings.

When I'm writing a song, it gives me more actual pleasure to hear someone else sing it than do it meself.

For me, every film is actually a form of documentary.

Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill.

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.

Test cricket is bloody hard work especially when youve got Sachin batting with what looks like a three metre wide bat.

I never knew that I'd still be doing this so many years later.

Job plunges into a series of demands on and accusations of God which may be and indeed are epigrams of high intelligence, but are not noticeably patient.

By 2029 computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people.

Yehudi Wyner has reinvented for himself a Romanticism that somehow manages to seem like a step forward rather than a step back.

Do not resent growing old. Many are denied the privilege.

I can look back at things I've done and said and worn and be completely humiliated by them, but I can never say it wasn't me. I feel really honored to say that.

What he's really talking about - and I'm speaking for Mike Flynn, not Donald Trump - is that he's saying, essentially, we have to have options. We have to have a lot of options. And, frankly, we do. We do have a lot of options.

The Moon may not be quite as appealing as Mars, but it's still a complex and poorly understood world, with many questions still unanswered.

First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, "I believe," three times.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

Your subconscious mind makes all your words and actions fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept and your innermost beliefs about yourself.

If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of like character which have originated in this government have been adjusted.

Sometimes there are two very opposite directions, and we go with the stronger one at the end. It's an impulse thing, like, 'Oh, I love both so much, but it's got to be one or the other because the two don't work together.'

Most people grow up dreaming of going to Hollywood and some of them work and work and work and finally end up in Hollywood.

For me, personally, skiing holds everything. I used to race cars, but skiing is a step beyond that. It removes the machinery and puts you one step closer to the elements. And it's a complete physical expression of freedom.