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From Dominance To Duchenne, Here Are 12 Kinds Of Smiles & What Each Means

Author:

Sarah Regan

Expert reviewer:

Kristina Hallett, Ph.D., ABPP

August 27, 2021

mbg Spirituality & Relationships Editor

By Sarah Regan

mbg Spirituality & Relationships Editor

Sarah Regan is a Spirituality & Relationships Editor, and a registered yoga instructor. She received her bachelor's in broadcasting and mass communication from SUNY Oswego, and lives in Buffalo, New York.

Expert review by

Kristina Hallett, Ph.D., ABPP

Board-certified Clinical Psychologist

Kristina Hallett, Ph.D., ABPP is a board-certified clinical psychologist with a background in neuroscience. She is also the Director of Clinical Training at Bay Path University, and an associate professor in Graduate Psychology.

August 27, 2021

As the adage goes, you're never fully dressed without a smile—but which type? As you've likely noticed throughout your own interactions with people, smiles can convey many emotions in many instances. (In fact, nowadays, perhaps you've noticed the impact masks have on our ability to gauge someone's expression.)

While the combinations of emotions and facial muscles can create infinite expressions and smiles, there are 12 types of smiles you'll see most often. Here's what they each mean.

The Duchenne smile

A Duchenne smile is a smile of true enjoyment. It's a truly genuine smile, identified by the way it reaches a person's eyes.

"Smiles of true enjoyment are the ones that have the smiling muscle that brings the lip corners up but also the muscle around the eye is activated," explains David Matsumoto, Ph.D., body language expert and founder of Humintell. "What the muscle around the eye does is brings the cheeks up, makes a shiny appearance of the cheeks, gives some people crow's feet wrinkles, and thins out the eyelids and eye cover fold."

These smiles are all about expressing positive emotions like elation, excitement, and amusement.

Reward smiles

A reward smile is any smile that expresses positive affect and rewarding self and others, according to research 1. Duchenne smiles can be thought of as a type of reward smile. These types of smiles communicate positive emotions and sensory states (like happiness or amusement, for example) "thereby potentially rewarding both the sender and the perceiver," the study authors write.

In a reward smile, the muscles in your mouth, cheeks, eyes, and eyebrows are engaged, resulting in a dopamine-inducing effect in either the sender or perceiver that makes behavior more likely to be reinforced.

Social smiles

Social smiles can also be called non-enjoyment smiles or affiliative smiles.

"On the broadest level, you've got smiles that are of true enjoyment and then you have smiles of non-enjoyment," Matsumoto notes. "Social smiles, or non-enjoyment smiles, don't have the eye muscles activated."

Think of these smiles as the somewhat strained, usually no-tooth smile you give a person you pass on the street or make eye contact with. While they're not necessarily the most genuine, Matsumoto notes they play an important role as a common courtesy, displaying openness to those around you and general friendliness.

Dominance smiles

In the aforementioned research by the University of Wisconsin and Queen's University Belfast in Ireland, the third classification of smiles is known as dominance smiles, and they're used to manage social hierarchies and status.

In this type of smile, your eyebrows and cheeks are lifted, similar to the Duchenne smile, but the smile itself loses its symmetry and looks more like a smirk or sneer. Where Duchenne smiles and even social smiles are considered a sign of pleasantry and positivity, dominance smiles definitely are not. They're associated with superiority, condescension, confidence, and boasting.

Dampened smiles

If you've ever tried to tone down and intense, toothy grin, that would be a "dampened" smile. According to some research 2, this kind of smile is common in areas of the world that are more subtle with their facial expressions, such as Japan.

In a dampened smile, a smile that would naturally look big is subdued by pulling the corners of the mouth down.

Embarrassed smiles

You've probably seen someone smile out of embarrassment before—and you've probably done it yourself, too. Very simply, this is the smile we pull when we're feeling general embarrassment. According to research, an embarrassed smile 3 includes a tight smile with the head tilted down, and often a shifting of the eyes to the left, looking away in discomfort.

Polite smiles

In a polite smile 4, the smile typically doesn't reach the eyes—but that doesn't mean it's not "sincere." There are plenty of circumstances that call for polite smiles, and they typically show up when we want to convey friendliness but remain reserved, such as when you meet a new person, research says.

Qualifier smiles

Similar to a polite smile but with a different motivation, qualifier smiles are most often used when delivering bad news to someone or when being critical of someone, making it a kind of mixed-signal smile.

A qualifier smile includes a slight head nod with the head tilting down and sideways, almost looking down at the person on the receiving end. As such, qualifier smiles can come off like the condescending counterpart to polite smiles.

Pan Am smiles

Named as such due to the need for flight attendants to stay smiling, the Pan Am smile is one service industry workers know too well, as they're typically part of the emotional labor required in such jobs. In fact, research even shows smiling on the job can get workers better tips 5.

Pan Am smiles are basically attempting to be Duchenne smiles, but they come across as distinctly forced or fake. They can also look over the top, because in most cases, the person smiling is overextending themselves in an effort to keep a smile on their face.

10.

Lying smiles

Some folks are better liars than others, but according to an old study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, it's a lying smile 6 that can often give you away. And remember, sometimes "lying" can mean simply concealing your genuine feelings. This research says lying smiles can often show "traces of muscular actions associated with disgust, fear, contempt, or sadness" when people try to mask negative emotions.

And in a more high-stakes lying situation, as observed in 2012 research 7 on people who turned out to be murderers, particular patterns of facial expressions were seen in those who were lying. Namely, the muscles around their mouths were activated.

11.

Flirtatious smiles

If you've ever wondered whether someone was flirting with you, research says 8 there's a pretty distinct set of characteristics that qualify a flirtatious smile. Look out for the head turned to one side with the chin tilted down slight, a slight smile, and eye contact.

12.

Wistful smiles

Last but not least, we have wistful smiles. The word "wistful," means "having or showing a feeling of vague or regretful longing." Call it melancholy, call it nostalgic—wistful smiles are one of the more complicated types of smiles on the list, and the telltale feature is often the expression in the eyes.

According to some research, our ability to smile during pain or difficult emotions can have a reassuring, social component for those around us. It's also believed smiling through pain or grief can have protective benefits.

The health benefits of smiling.

If you've ever been told to smile to yourself, or at yourself in the mirror, to boost your mood—it's actually sound advice, according to research. One study found that participants who smiled during a stressful task had lower heart rates during stress recovery than those who didn't smile—and the smiles of true enjoyment, or Duchenne smiles, displayed the best coping response to the stress of participants.

Additional research has pointed to an interesting explanation for this: Intentionally smiling causes the same brain activity as an involuntary or natural smile 9. In this sense, you really can fake it till you make it.

And those feel-good emotions that can be elicited by a smile can also, in turn, help your immune system, bringing your body into a state of greater balance, which encourages proper immune function. All that is to say: smiling, intentional or not, is great for your physical and mental health.

The bottom line.

"The truth is," Matsumoto notes, "smiles can combine with almost anything else the face does to create hundreds of combinations of expressions. The affiliation and dominance depend on the combination."

Once we become aware of the types of smiles, we can better read, understand, and communicate with people. (Though direct, honest communication never hurts!) We may not be able to see people's full faces when we're out and about these days, but now when you see someone's eyes light up behind their mask, you'll know they're smiling.