Does Smiling Make You Look Younger, or Older?

Smiling is credited with everything from building rapport to stimulating approach behavior to improving the persuasiveness of social media influencers.[i] Even drawing a smile on the back of a check increases tips for servers.[ii] Accordingly, it is no surprise that in advertising smiling is portrayed as attractive, alluring, and ageless. Is it? Many people equate smiling with youth, which is no doubt why so many products are marketed by beaming models and smiling satisfied customers. However, according to research, the assumed correlation between smiling and youth may be misplaced.

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The Age of a Smile

Tzvi Ganel and Melvyn A. Goodale examined the effect of smiling on perceived age.[iii] They began by noting the common belief that smiling makes us look younger. Yet they also recognize that empirically, that has not been demonstrated to be true, and that in fact, research shows the opposite—that smiling faces are perceived as older than faces with a neutral expression. They explain how these seemingly contradictory findings can be reconciled.

In their study, participants rated smiling faces as as older than neutral faces, but afterwards, recalled the smiling faces as being younger than the neutral faces. When a second experiment extended results to a set of emotional expressions that included surprised faces, the smiling faces were again perceived as older than neutral faces, which were perceived as older than faces registering surprise. But as with the first experiment, after the fact, participants again believed that smiling makes people look younger.

Ganel and Goodale found in another study that smiling faces are perceived as older than neutral faces of the same individuals due to smile-associated wrinkles in the eye region critical for face perception, consistent with the results of their first experiment in the current study. They explain that people believe smiling makes faces appear younger is likely due to the positive social value associated with smiling across various situations.

Smile and the World Smiles With You: The Effect of Affect

Another possible explanation for the popular belief in the youthfulness of a smile is its positive effect. An authentic smile makes people approachable, popular, attractive, engaging, and enjoyable to be around. Smiles are contagious, as is easily demonstrated in daily life, from friends and family to strangers. Slogans such as “service with a smile” demonstrate the established social value of the most popular facial expression.

Another explanation for the mistaken belief that smiles make people look younger is the perceived link between beauty and youth. Young faces are used to market every product under the sun: from beauty and makeup to health to sports and recreation. But in reality, smiles are themselves beautiful, which likely affects our perception of the beauty of the smiling face itself.

If in doubt, try smiling more for a week and see how people respond to you, both personally and professionally. No matter how old you are, a smile is one of the most complementary accessories you can display, in any setting.