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Smile (or grimace) through the pain? The effects of experimentally manipulated facial expressions on needle-injection responses
Abstract
Smiling has been previously shown to improve stress responses. We replicated and expanded this work by testing whether smiling helps with a potent real-world stressor: a vaccination-like needle injection. We also extended past research by examining grimacing, a facial expression known to naturally occur during stress and pain and one that shares some of the same facial action units as smiling. Participants (n = 231; [M]age = 19.2) were randomized to hold either a Duchenne smile, a non-Duchenne smile, a grimace, or a neutral expression while receiving a 25-gauge needle injection of saline solution. Expression was covertly manipulated via cover story and chopstick placement in the mouth. Heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) were collected continuously alongside self-reports of pain, emotion, and distress. Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated a between-subjects effect of facial condition on self-reported pain as well as a Condition × Time effect. Probing each time point revealed the strongest effect to be at needle injection, where the Duchenne smile and grimace groups reported approximately 40% less needle pain versus the neutral group. Repeated-measures ANOVAs also revealed differences between conditions for both HR and EDA. In post hoc analyses, only the Duchenne smile group exhibited significantly lower HR than neutral, with marginal Duchenne benefits found for EDA. Together, these findings indicate that both smiling and grimacing can improve subjective needle pain experiences, but Duchenne smiling may be better suited for blunting the stress-induced physiological responses of the body versus other facial expressions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... This was done to confirm that fNMES did not recruit other surrounding muscles. Further, AU4 was to ensure participants were not grimacing in discomfort (Pressman et al., 2021). ...
According to the Facial Feedback Hypothesis (FFH), feedback from facial muscles can initiate and modulate a person's emotional state. However, this assumption is debated, and existing research has arguably suffered from a lack of control over which facial muscles are activated, when, to what degree, and for how long. To overcome these limitations, we carried out a pre-registered experiment recruiting 58 participants in 2023 in which we applied facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES) to the Zygomaticus Major (ZM) and Depressor Anguli Oris (DAO) muscles for 5 seconds at 100% and 50% of the participants individual motor threshold (MT). After each trial, participants reported their emotions' valence and arousal. Heart rate and electrodermal activity were recorded throughout. Results showed that muscle activation through fNMES, even when controlling for fNMES-induced discomfort, modulated participants' emotional state as expected, with more positive emotions reported after stronger stimulation of the ZM than the DAO muscle. The addition of expression-congruent emotional images increased the effect. Moreover, fNMES intensity predicted arousal ratings and skin conductance responses. The finding that changes in felt emotion can be induced through brief, controlled activation of specific facial muscles is in line with the FFH and offers exciting opportunities for translational intervention.
... The degree of difficulty of transitioning to a strong smile state when experiencing pain may depend on the reason for smiling. Amused smiles reflect a desire to convey a positive emotional state, to increase rapport with another person , whereas pain smiles may be expressed as a form of social appeasement (Singh & Manjaly, 2021) or facial feedback (which shows intraindividual differences) (Coles et al., 2019;Kraft & Pressman, 2012;Pressman et al., 2020). The current study corroborated evidence that differences in communicative gestures elicited by a given emotion can result in idiosyncratic state transitions. ...
Smiles are universal but nuanced facial expressions that are most frequently used in face-to-face communications, typically indicating amusement but sometimes conveying negative emotions such as embarrassment and pain. Although previous studies have suggested that spatial and temporal properties could differ among these various types of smiles, no study has thoroughly analyzed these properties. This study aimed to clarify the spatiotemporal properties of smiles conveying amusement, embarrassment, and pain using a spontaneous facial behavior database. The results regarding spatial patterns revealed that pained smiles showed less eye constriction and more overall facial tension than amused smiles; no spatial differences were identified between embarrassed and amused smiles. Regarding temporal properties, embarrassed and pained smiles remained in a state of higher facial tension than amused smiles. Moreover, embarrassed smiles showed a more gradual change from tension states to the smile state than amused smiles, and pained smiles had lower probabilities of staying in or transitioning to the smile state compared to amused smiles. By comparing the spatiotemporal properties of these three smile types, this study revealed that the probability of transitioning between discrete states could help distinguish amused, embarrassed, and pained smiles.
Wellbeing is undoubtedly fundamentally important to society and businesses. The current health situation has placed the question of people’s health at the heart of day-to-day discussions, albeit on a different level. The deaths, suffering and hardship associated with the pandemic, and the urgency to deal with them, have brought about the reawakening of a general awareness, a renewed sensitivity to people’s wellbeing. Although a good thing, it has been attenuated by the effects of the pandemic and also the lifestyle that could cause many more victims.
Depuis sa découverte, la pratique de la vaccination s’est améliorée de façon continue afin d’offrir une meilleure efficacité et tolérance. Les réactions locales voire diffuses sont souvent évoquées, mais aucune étude ne rapporte de résultats en fonction du bras choisi pour l’injection. Nous avons réalisé une étude observationnelle prospective aux centres de vaccination COVID-19 du GHT des Landes pendant trois semaines. Un questionnaire était remis après la deuxième injection et évaluait les douleurs et gênes du patient lors de la première injection. Durant cette période, 2 797 patients ont reçu leur deuxième injection, 2 487 ont répondu au questionnaire dont 2 301 sont exploitables. La vaccination a été réalisée à 81 % du côté du bras non dominant et à 19 % du côté du bras dominant. Les douleurs/gênes locales ont été rapportées par 47 % des patients sur les deux bras, leur apparition étant survenue le jour même pour la moitié des personnes et le lendemain pour l’autre moitié, avec une intensité moyenne de 3,3 sur une échelle de 10. Les douleurs/gênes diffuses étaient présentes chez 19 % des personnes, quel que soit le côté. Le choix du bras pour l’injection semble ne pas avoir d’influence sur la survenue de douleurs.
Smiling has been a topic of interest to psychologists for decades, with a myriad of studies tying this behavior to well-being. Despite this, we know surprisingly little about the nature of the connections between smiling and physical health. We review the literature connecting both naturally occurring smiles and experimentally manipulated smiles to physical health and health-relevant outcomes. This work is discussed in the context of existing affect and health-relevant theoretical models that help explain the connection between smiling and physical health including the facial feedback hypothesis, the undoing hypothesis, the generalized unsafety theory of stress, and polyvagal theory. We also describe a number of plausible pathways, some new and relatively untested, through which smiling may influence physical health such as trait or state positive affect, social relationships, stress buffering, and the oculocardiac reflex. Finally, we provide a discussion of possible future directions, including the importance of cultural variation and replication. Although this field is still in its infancy, the findings from both naturally occurring smile studies and experimentally manipulated smile studies consistently suggest that smiling may have a number of health-relevant benefits including beneficially impacting our physiology during acute stress, improved stress recovery, and reduced illness over time.
The life story, or narrative identity, is a psychosocial construction that brings together and integrates the self and experience within a broad story-based framework. Personality psychologists typically capture aspects of this inner story by prompting participants for descriptions of life chapters and/or specific and self-definitional autobiographical key scenes (e.g., high points, low points, turning points). Features of participants’ responses are then quantified for their thematic and/or structural content. There exists a number of additional and complementary assessment techniques that could buttress study of, and theory pertaining to, narrative identity. Here, I work to identify these assessments, which include self-reports, informant reports, and behavioral observations, and organize them within narrative identity’s nomological network. This work concludes with a number of suggestions for the ways in which traditional assessments may be better attuned to capture narrative identity’s integrative nature.
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