Smiling Makes You Look Older, Israeli Research Finds
George Clooney smiles during a press conference about corruption in South Sudan in Washington, D.C. Image by Getty
JERUSALEM (JTA) — People who smile at others are perceived as being older, not younger, than those with a neutral expression, a Ben-Gurion University of the Negev study found.
The findings were published in the May 8 edition of Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
In a series of experiments intended to gauge age perception based on facial expressions, 40 Ben-Gurion University students were shown images of people and asked to rank them from oldest to youngest. The study participants were shown pictures of smiling faces, neutral expressions and surprised looks. They ranked the smiling faces as the oldest and surprised expressions as the youngest.
“Popular media promotes the idea that smiling makes you look younger,” Tzvi Ganel, head of the Laboratory for Visual Perception and Action in the university’s Department of Psychology, said in a statement. “Look at all of the smiling faces in skincare and dental ads. How many of us post smiling faces on social media?”
The researchers believe that smiling makes a person look older because of the wrinkle lines that form around the eyes. A surprised face, however, lifts and pulls the skin backward, smoothing any potential age-related wrinkles.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
