Smiley Smile
Posted by Zach Wendling on 24 February 2005 | 3 responses
A friend sent me this interesting article describing how Americans and British have different smiles:
While we British smile by pulling our lips back and upwards and exposing our lower teeth, Americans are more likely simply to part their lips and stretch the corners of their mouths.
So distinct is the difference that the scientist behind the research was able last week to pick out Britons from Americans from close-cropped pictures of their smiles alone, with an accuracy of more than 90%.
Naturally, I thought of the Simpson’s episode featuring the Big Book of British Smiles, and doubted the distinction could be entirely due to muscles. (Apparently, the state of orthodonty in the UK is a sincere topic.)
It seems that this kind of popular science, explaining body language through kinesiology, comes along every so often, usually, as here, in books rather than journals. Which is not to say that it’s buncombe — perhaps just interesting but not useful.
And interesting indeed:
Other research has shown that women smile more than men in public, but stop smiling in private.
The power behind the smile may also be more potent than anybody has previously realised: Keltner recently released a study of photographs of women in college yearbooks dating back to the 1960s in which he separated the Duchenne smilers from the artfully posed.
Researchers then tracked the women down and found that those who had smiled most happily at college overwhelmingly tended to have had the happiest lives since they had graduated.
Amazingly, I did not think of the Big Book of British Smiles when I read the beginning of this post.
absolute nonsense.
as a Brit and a Brummie, i can say that we have the best healthiest teeth in the world. this is because we have had flouridated water for the longest time.
http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/Water+fluoridation
admittedly, plastic surgery is not so fashionable here. But the cosmetic effect of braces etc.. is not the same thing as dental health.
In this regard, it should be noted that more than 100 million Americans lack dental insurance:
http://www.healthypeople.gov/data/2010prog/focus21/
An increased number of plastic-looking smiles in the population is not any kind of compensation for the increased number of individuals self-medicating for tooth decay. My brother lived in Florida for a while and was horrified by the number of sailors and fishermen with terrible dental problems. He discovered that it was common practice to yank their own teeth out owing to lack of dental cover. One such an incident would be front-page news in the UK.
Ive kissed a lot of girls. Japanese have the worst teeth. The only downside.
Compare the stats:
US: “Comparison of data from the survey periods 1988–1994 and 1999–2000 show that the proportion of 15-year-olds who had ever had caries in permanent teeth fell from 61 percent to 59 percent. ”
(link above)
UK:
“The 2003 Children’s Dental Health Survey found that obvious dental decay experience in 8, 12 and 15 year olds’ permanent teeth has decreased to its lowest recorded level since 1983.
The improvement was particularly strong among 15 year olds, with the proportion having decay into dentine falling from 42 per cent in 1983, to 30 per cent in 1993, to 13 per cent in 2003.”
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=997
Im not expert, but it seems to me that the UK has excellent healthcare compared with the US when it is taken into account that so many people in the US are not covered.
In general, the US pays more for health care and gets a worse service. Why? Because there is a bigger phalanx of insurers, advertisers & lawyers taking a cut..
The service available for the wealthiest in the US is, nevertheless, matchless.