The surprising pattern behind the expressions people respond to most positively.
When it comes to a successful smile, less is more.
The most effective, successful and pleasant smile doesn’t show too many teeth.
It is a medium- or low-wattage smile.
Certainly, it is not true that the bigger the smile, the better it is, as the study’s authors explain:
“…the optimal window (or sweet spot) of smile extent contradicts the principle that “more is always better” with respect to smile extent.”
The image below shows some of the different types of smiles they tested.
The smiles surrounded by the most green were rated the most successful.
You can see that smiles 13, 14 and 10 are surrounded by the most green, indicating that they were rated the most successful.
All three of the highest-rated smiles are relatively restrained rather than broad.
Showing too many teeth can even cause the facial expression to send a message you might not intend:
“…forming open-mouth smiles with small angles/extents can produce unintended perceptions of the expression, e.g., contempt or fear instead of happiness.”
Here, for those of you of a technical bent, are the exact scientific characteristics of a successful smile:
“…we found that a successful smile consists of (i) an optimal window of mouth angle and smile extent, (ii) the correct amount of dental show for the given angle-extent combination, and (iii) dynamic symmetry such that the left and right sides of the mouth are temporally synced within 125 ms.”
Now it’s time to head to the mirror and put the findings into practice!
Related
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Helwig et al., 2017).
