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导读：
我们的笑容很复杂，有些与快乐无关。文章从一项“变态”的实验说起，发现“笑”是可以发生在任何情境之下的，无论此情境可能有多暴力残酷。此后文章聊作概述，笑容可能传递很多情绪，它是人们的一张面具。继而，文章分别提到Duchenne smile，又是一个可怕的实验；fear smile，达尔文对此的观点是，这个害怕的情况下的笑容跟其他灵长类近亲相似，是普适性的；miserable smile， 这里提到笑容这件事情绝非习得，而是DNA的传承。盲人也跟常人一样地笑; dampened smile，部分国家认为露齿、纯真的笑未必值得鼓励，而这种抑制的笑是一种认为控制面部肌肉的结果；embarrassed smile， 跟前面的dampened smile有相似处，但是后者会有脸红以及略微像左下方低头的迹象；qualifier smile，装饰性的微笑，用以削弱坏消息的影响；而与QS相似的还有三种但是功用各异：compliance smile， coordination response smile和 listener response smile； contempt smile， 嘴角紧张是特征；Angry-enjoyment smile，也就是schadenfreude，我们曾经讲过的幸灾乐祸的笑容；Fake smile，很容易做到。此外，不要仅通过一个人的笑容与你的笑容之差别来判断他们是否真心，文化背景的差异也是笑容有异的部分原因。最后，还有著名的Flirtatious smile，来自蒙娜丽莎的转瞬即逝的笑靥。
[导言]
Our grins are not as simple as they seem. There are a myriad different ways to smile – and some of them can conceal some less than happy feelings.
- Grin [ɡrɪn] 露齿而笑
[1] As they hovered over their victims, knives at the ready, Carney Landis issued his instructions. The beheading was ready to commence.
- Hover ['hɒvə(r)] 盘旋
- Beheading [bɪ'hedɪŋ] 斩首
- Commence [kə'mens] 开始
[2] It was 1924 and this particularly sadistic grad student had lured an assortment of fellow pupils, teachers and psychology patients – including a 13-year-old boy – into a room at the University of Minnesota.
- sadistic [sə'dɪstɪk] 残酷的，虐待成性的
- lure [lʊə] 诱惑，吸引
[3] To put his subjects at ease he had redecorated, concealing laboratory equipment, draping cloth over the windows and hanging paintings on the walls.
- Drape [dreɪp] 用布帘遮盖
[4] Landis wanted to know if certain experiences, such as pain or shock, always elicited the same facial expressions. And he was prepared to inflict them in order to find out. He sat his subjects down in comfortable chairs, then painted lines on their faces so that he could better see their grimaces.
- elicite [i'lɪsɪt] 引出
- grimace [ɡrɪ'meɪs] 面部的扭曲，鬼脸，痛苦的表情
[5] Over the course of three hours, they were repeatedly photographed while being subjected to a series of bizarre and unpleasant pranks, including placing fireworks under their seats and electrocuting their hands while they felt around in a bucket of slimy frogs. The climax came when he fetched a live white rat on a tray and asked them to cut off its head with a butcher’s knife.
- Prank [præŋk] 恶作剧
- electrocute [ɪ'lektrəkjuːt] 用电刑
- slimy ['slaɪmi] 黏滑的
[6] Landis’ methods were certainly unethical, but perhaps the most uneasy revelation was what he discovered. Even during the most violent tasks, the most common reaction wasn’t to cry or rage – it was to smile. He wrote: “So far as this experiment goes I have found no expression other than a smile, which was present in enough photographs to be considered as typical of any situation.”
- Unethical [ʌn'eθɪkl] 不道德的
- Rage [reɪdʒ] 狂怒，大怒
[7] What was going on?
[8] Fast-forward to 2017 and we’re head-over-heels for this simple reflex. Today reminders to ‘smile’ are ubiquitous, printed on fridge magnets, adverts, self-help books and occasionally hurled at us by well-meaning strangers. Those who smile often are thought of as more likeable, competent, approachable, friendly and attractive.
- head-over-heels 深深地，完全地
- reflex ['riːfleks] 反射
[9] But the truth is far more sinister. Of 19 different types of smile, only six occur when we’re having a good time. The rest happen when we’re in pain, embarrassed, uncomfortable, horrified or even miserable. A smile may mean contempt, anger or incredulity, that we’re lying or that we’ve lost.
- Sinister ['sɪnɪstə(r)] 邪恶的，不祥的
[10] While genuine, happy smiles exist as a reward for when we’ve done something helpful to our survival, the ‘non-enjoyment’ smiles are less about what you’re feeling inside and more about what you want to signal to others. “Some evolved to signal that we’re cooperative and non-threatening; others have evolved to let people know, without aggression, that we are superior to them in this present interaction,” says Paula Niedenthal, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
[11] Many are polite gestures which demonstrate that we’re following the rules. But they can also be an effective way of manipulating others or distracting them from our true feelings. More often than not, the universal symbol of happiness is used as a mask.
- Manipulate [mə'nɪpjuleɪt] 操纵
Duchenne smile
[12] The first steps to decoding this multi-purpose expression came from the 19th Century neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne. He was the son of a French pirate and had a penchant for electrocuting his patients – among other things, he was a founding father of electrotherapy. Duchenne was interested in the mechanics of facial expressions, including how the muscles of the face contract to produce a smile. The best way to study this, he decided, was to attach electrodes to a person’s face and jolt their muscles into action.
- Jolt [dʒəʊlt] 颠簸，敲击
[13] The procedure was so painful, initially Duchenne was only able to experiment on the freshly severed heads of revolutionaries. Then one day, quite by chance, he met a middle-aged man with facial insensitivity in a Paris hospital – he had found his human guinea pig.
- Sever ['sevə] 切开，分离
- Revolutionary [ˌrevə'luːʃənəri] 革命者
- guinea pig 被试，小白鼠
[14] In all Duchenne went on to discover 60 facial expressions, each involving its own dedicated group of facial muscles, which he depicted in a series of grisly photographs.
- Grisly ['ɡrɪzli] 可怕的
[15] In the most famous of these, the unlucky man has his face contorted into a broad, toothless grin. He looks idiotically happy, with his cheeks pushed up and crow’s feet around his eyes.
- Contort [kən'tɔːt] 扭曲
- idiotically [ˌɪdi'ɒtɪkli] 失心疯一般地
- crow’s feet 鱼尾纹
[16] It’s since become known as the ‘felt’ or ‘Duchenne‘ smile and it’s associated with genuine feelings of pleasure and giddy happiness. The smile is long and intense, though it involves the contraction of just two muscles. First the zygomatic major, which resides in the cheek, tugs at the corners of the mouth, then the orbicularis oculi, which surrounds the eye, pulls up the cheeks, leading to the characteristic ‘twinkling eyes’.
- Contraction [kən'trækʃn] 收缩，痉挛
- zygomatic [ˌzaɪgə'mætɪk] 颧骨的
- tug [tʌɡ]用力拉
- orbicularis [ɔːˌbɪkjʊ'leərɪs] 轮匝肌
- oculi ['ɒkjʊlɪ] 眼状开口
- twinkling ['twɪŋklɪŋ] 闪烁的
[17] But there’s a twist. “In some places in the world, perceptions of genuine smiles don’t seem to depend on the presence of crow’s feet at all,” says Niedenthal.
[18] Which brings us to a question which has been baffling scientists for over a century, from Darwin to Freud: are our expressions instinctive and universal, or do they depend on the culture we’re born into?
- Baffle ['bæfl] 困惑
Fear smile
[19] One clue comes from our closest cousins. In fact, though the felt smile may seem like the most natural today, some scientists think it may have evolved from an expression with a very different meaning. “When bonobo chimpanzees are afraid they’ll expose their teeth and draw their lips back so that their gums are exposed,” says Zanna Clay, a primatologist at the University of Birmingham.
- Gum [ɡʌm] 牙床
- primatologist [ˌpraɪmə'tɒlədʒɪ] 灵长类动物学家
[20] The ‘silent bared teeth display’ looks so much like a smile it’s often featured on birthday cards, but in chimpanzees it’s a gesture of submission, used by low-status individuals to appease more dominant members of the group. Clay cites a popular video of a chimp stealing a rock. “She snuck off with it and then broke out into this big, cheeky grin. It looks like she’s laughing, but she’s probably nervous,” says Clay.
- appease [ə'piːz] 使缓和
- sneak off 偷偷溜走
[21] And though we don’t tend to associate smiling with feeling fearful in humans, there are tantalising hints that the fear smile may have lingered on. In babies, a broad grin can either mean they’re happy or distressed and studies have shown that men tend to smile more around those considered to be higher status.
- Tantalising ['tæntəlaɪzɪŋ] 具有挑逗性的
[22] Darwin believed that facial expressions are instinctive, having originally evolved to serve practical functions. For example, raising the eyebrows in surprise increases the field of vision, which may have helped our ancestors to escape ambushes by predators. In chimpanzees, fear smiles show the teeth tightly clamped together – as if to show that they’re not about to bite.
- Ambush ['æmbʊʃ] 埋伏，伏兵
- Clamp [klæmp] 夹住
[23] To prove his point, Darwin improvised an experiment at his home in Downe, a sleepy village just outside of London. He chose 11 of Duchenne’s photographs – the two were in regular correspondence – and asked 20 of his guests to guess which emotion they represented. They unanimously agreed on happiness, fear, sadness and surprise, among others, and Darwin concluded that these expressions are universal.
- Improvise ['ɪmprəvaɪz] 临时准备
- In correspondence 一致
- unanimously [ju'nænɪməsli] 全体一致地
Miserable smile
[24] We now know that smiling is indeed instinctive, but not just when we’re happy. The ‘miserable smile’ is a stoical grin-and-bear-it expression – a slight, asymmetric smile with an expression of deep sadness pasted over the top.
- stoical ['stəʊɪkl] 坚忍的，禁欲主义的
- asymmetric [ˌeɪsɪ'metrɪk] 不对称的
[25] Since Landis’ classic study, psychologists have found this tell-tale smirk on the faces those watching gory films – they were filmed by a hidden camera – and among patients suffering from depression. It's a socially acceptable way of showing that you’re sad or in pain.
- Telltale ['telteɪl] 无法掩饰的，报警的
- gory ['ɡɔːri] 血腥的
[26] For decades, psychologists believed that this counter-intuitive habit might be learned, but in 2009 a team from San Francisco State University uncovered tantalising evidence that it’s programmed into our DNA.
By analysing more than 4,800 photographs of athletes competing in the Athens Summer Olympic Games, they found that silver medallists who lost their final matches tended to produce these smiles – even if they had been blind from birth.
来源:
导读：
我们的笑容很复杂，有些与快乐无关。文章从一项“变态”的实验说起，发现“笑”是可以发生在任何情境之下的，无论此情境可能有多暴力残酷。此后文章聊作概述，笑容可能传递很多情绪，它是人们的一张面具。继而，文章分别提到Duchenne smile，又是一个可怕的实验；fear smile，达尔文对此的观点是，这个害怕的情况下的笑容跟其他灵长类近亲相似，是普适性的；miserable smile， 这里提到笑容这件事情绝非习得，而是DNA的传承。盲人也跟常人一样地笑; dampened smile，部分国家认为露齿、纯真的笑未必值得鼓励，而这种抑制的笑是一种认为控制面部肌肉的结果；embarrassed smile， 跟前面的dampened smile有相似处，但是后者会有脸红以及略微像左下方低头的迹象；qualifier smile，装饰性的微笑，用以削弱坏消息的影响；而与QS相似的还有三种但是功用各异：compliance smile， coordination response smile和 listener response smile； contempt smile， 嘴角紧张是特征；Angry-enjoyment smile，也就是schadenfreude，我们曾经讲过的幸灾乐祸的笑容；Fake smile，很容易做到。此外，不要仅通过一个人的笑容与你的笑容之差别来判断他们是否真心，文化背景的差异也是笑容有异的部分原因。最后，还有著名的Flirtatious smile，来自蒙娜丽莎的转瞬即逝的笑靥。
[导言]
Our grins are not as simple as they seem. There are a myriad different ways to smile – and some of them can conceal some less than happy feelings.
[1] As they hovered over their victims, knives at the ready, Carney Landis issued his instructions. The beheading was ready to commence.
[2] It was 1924 and this particularly sadistic grad student had lured an assortment of fellow pupils, teachers and psychology patients – including a 13-year-old boy – into a room at the University of Minnesota.
[3] To put his subjects at ease he had redecorated, concealing laboratory equipment, draping cloth over the windows and hanging paintings on the walls.
[4] Landis wanted to know if certain experiences, such as pain or shock, always elicited the same facial expressions. And he was prepared to inflict them in order to find out. He sat his subjects down in comfortable chairs, then painted lines on their faces so that he could better see their grimaces.
[5] Over the course of three hours, they were repeatedly photographed while being subjected to a series of bizarre and unpleasant pranks, including placing fireworks under their seats and electrocuting their hands while they felt around in a bucket of slimy frogs. The climax came when he fetched a live white rat on a tray and asked them to cut off its head with a butcher’s knife.
[6] Landis’ methods were certainly unethical, but perhaps the most uneasy revelation was what he discovered. Even during the most violent tasks, the most common reaction wasn’t to cry or rage – it was to smile. He wrote: “So far as this experiment goes I have found no expression other than a smile, which was present in enough photographs to be considered as typical of any situation.”
[7] What was going on?
[8] Fast-forward to 2017 and we’re head-over-heels for this simple reflex. Today reminders to ‘smile’ are ubiquitous, printed on fridge magnets, adverts, self-help books and occasionally hurled at us by well-meaning strangers. Those who smile often are thought of as more likeable, competent, approachable, friendly and attractive.
[9] But the truth is far more sinister. Of 19 different types of smile, only six occur when we’re having a good time. The rest happen when we’re in pain, embarrassed, uncomfortable, horrified or even miserable. A smile may mean contempt, anger or incredulity, that we’re lying or that we’ve lost.
[10] While genuine, happy smiles exist as a reward for when we’ve done something helpful to our survival, the ‘non-enjoyment’ smiles are less about what you’re feeling inside and more about what you want to signal to others. “Some evolved to signal that we’re cooperative and non-threatening; others have evolved to let people know, without aggression, that we are superior to them in this present interaction,” says Paula Niedenthal, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
[11] Many are polite gestures which demonstrate that we’re following the rules. But they can also be an effective way of manipulating others or distracting them from our true feelings. More often than not, the universal symbol of happiness is used as a mask.
Duchenne smile
[12] The first steps to decoding this multi-purpose expression came from the 19th Century neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne. He was the son of a French pirate and had a penchant for electrocuting his patients – among other things, he was a founding father of electrotherapy. Duchenne was interested in the mechanics of facial expressions, including how the muscles of the face contract to produce a smile. The best way to study this, he decided, was to attach electrodes to a person’s face and jolt their muscles into action.
[13] The procedure was so painful, initially Duchenne was only able to experiment on the freshly severed heads of revolutionaries. Then one day, quite by chance, he met a middle-aged man with facial insensitivity in a Paris hospital – he had found his human guinea pig.
[14] In all Duchenne went on to discover 60 facial expressions, each involving its own dedicated group of facial muscles, which he depicted in a series of grisly photographs.
[15] In the most famous of these, the unlucky man has his face contorted into a broad, toothless grin. He looks idiotically happy, with his cheeks pushed up and crow’s feet around his eyes.
[16] It’s since become known as the ‘felt’ or ‘Duchenne‘ smile and it’s associated with genuine feelings of pleasure and giddy happiness. The smile is long and intense, though it involves the contraction of just two muscles. First the zygomatic major, which resides in the cheek, tugs at the corners of the mouth, then the orbicularis oculi, which surrounds the eye, pulls up the cheeks, leading to the characteristic ‘twinkling eyes’.
[17] But there’s a twist. “In some places in the world, perceptions of genuine smiles don’t seem to depend on the presence of crow’s feet at all,” says Niedenthal.
[18] Which brings us to a question which has been baffling scientists for over a century, from Darwin to Freud: are our expressions instinctive and universal, or do they depend on the culture we’re born into?
Fear smile
[19] One clue comes from our closest cousins. In fact, though the felt smile may seem like the most natural today, some scientists think it may have evolved from an expression with a very different meaning. “When bonobo chimpanzees are afraid they’ll expose their teeth and draw their lips back so that their gums are exposed,” says Zanna Clay, a primatologist at the University of Birmingham.
[20] The ‘silent bared teeth display’ looks so much like a smile it’s often featured on birthday cards, but in chimpanzees it’s a gesture of submission, used by low-status individuals to appease more dominant members of the group. Clay cites a popular video of a chimp stealing a rock. “She snuck off with it and then broke out into this big, cheeky grin. It looks like she’s laughing, but she’s probably nervous,” says Clay.
[21] And though we don’t tend to associate smiling with feeling fearful in humans, there are tantalising hints that the fear smile may have lingered on. In babies, a broad grin can either mean they’re happy or distressed and studies have shown that men tend to smile more around those considered to be higher status.
[22] Darwin believed that facial expressions are instinctive, having originally evolved to serve practical functions. For example, raising the eyebrows in surprise increases the field of vision, which may have helped our ancestors to escape ambushes by predators. In chimpanzees, fear smiles show the teeth tightly clamped together – as if to show that they’re not about to bite.
[23] To prove his point, Darwin improvised an experiment at his home in Downe, a sleepy village just outside of London. He chose 11 of Duchenne’s photographs – the two were in regular correspondence – and asked 20 of his guests to guess which emotion they represented. They unanimously agreed on happiness, fear, sadness and surprise, among others, and Darwin concluded that these expressions are universal.
Miserable smile
[24] We now know that smiling is indeed instinctive, but not just when we’re happy. The ‘miserable smile’ is a stoical grin-and-bear-it expression – a slight, asymmetric smile with an expression of deep sadness pasted over the top.
[25] Since Landis’ classic study, psychologists have found this tell-tale smirk on the faces those watching gory films – they were filmed by a hidden camera – and among patients suffering from depression. It's a socially acceptable way of showing that you’re sad or in pain.
[26] For decades, psychologists believed that this counter-intuitive habit might be learned, but in 2009 a team from San Francisco State University uncovered tantalising evidence that it’s programmed into our DNA.
By analysing more than 4,800 photographs of athletes competing in the Athens Summer Olympic Games, they found that silver medallists who lost their final matches tended to produce these smiles – even if they had been blind from birth.