Self-help books regularly tell us it’s possible to ‘think yourself happy’, but it appears there may be a simple hack to achieving this – and all you need is a pencil.
Researchers from the University of South Australia have found that simply holding a pen or pencil in between your teeth, effectively forcing your facial muscles into a smiling position, is enough to trick your brain into thinking more positively.
What’s more, your brain is so hoodwinked by the strange – but simple – trick that it changes the way you move and your body language in response.
To measure each participant’s positivity, the groups were divided into two. One group was asked to hold a pen between their teeth without letting it touch their lips, forcing their facial muscles into a smiling position. The other group didn’t take part in the task.
Both groups were then shown photos and videos of people’s faces and walking styles. For each one, the participants were asked to rate how happy they thought the people in the images and clips were.
Across the board, the people who had held the pen in their teeth were more likely to label a photo or video as being ‘happy’ versus those who didn’t. This experiment was repeated with the pen being held within a person’s lips, rather than their teeth, to rule out the fact that simply having something in your mouth could change your perception. There was no noticeable increase in positive thinking in this experiment when compared to the pen-in-teeth experiment.
‘When your muscles say you’re happy, you’re more likely to see the world around you in a positive way,’ said lead author Dr Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos.
‘In our research we found that when you forcefully practice smiling, it stimulates the amygdala – the emotional centre of the brain – which releases neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state. If we can trick the brain into perceiving stimuli as “happy”, then we can potentially use this mechanism to help boost mental health.’