November
1, 2005:
Smiling
Interview
with Dr. Marianne LaFrance, Professor Of Psychology at Yale
University |
Mike
Carruthers:
When it comes to smiling, there are some pretty interesting
gender differences.
Dr. Marianne
LaFrance:
Well, the gender stuff is fascinating, in part because the gender
difference itself changes over the course of a lifespan.
Dr. Marianne
LaFrance, professor of psychology at Yale University and consultant
to the Dasani water company.
Gender differences
are at their maximum when people are between the ages of, say,
late adolescence and early adult years. That's when men are
much less likely to smile than women. In fact, little boys stop
smiling about age 5 and little girls smile even more after age
5. Little boys get the message that to be a real guy, you should
look self-contained and under control and John Wayne-ish.
Whereas little
girls get the message…
…to look sweet
as can be, and one of the ways to communicate sweetness and
light is to smile.
It appears that
how much you smile does affect your life.
There's a very
interesting study done very recently where they looked at college
yearbooks of women from the 50s and managed to follow those
folks. Women who were smiling in their college yearbooks had
higher life satisfaction, lower divorce rate, basically happier
people forty years later than women who were not smiling in
their college yearbooks.
For transcripts and our newsletter, visit our website, somethingyoushouldknow.net.
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's "Something You Should Know."
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