Each time you smile your brain feels really happy. Smiling activates the release of feel-good-triggers that work towards fighting stress. These messengers help you experience a whole range of emotions, from happiness to sadness, anger to depression. When a smile flashes across your face, dopamine, endorphins and serotonin are released into your bloodstream, relaxing your body and lowering heart rate and blood pressure. Endorphins are natural painkillers - 100% naturally produced by your own body, without the negative effects of medication.

When you smile, people treat you differently. You’re seen as attractive, reliable, relaxed and sincere. Scientists found that seeing an attractive smiling face activates your orbitofrontal cortex, the region in your brain processing sensory rewards. This suggests that when you view a person smiling, you actually feel that you’re being rewarded.

Smiling is infectious, because the part of your brain that is responsible for the facial expression of smiling when happy or mimicking another person’s smile is located in the cingulate cortex, an unconscious automatic response area. In a Swedish study, subjects were shown pictures of different emotions, including joy, fear, anger, and surprise. The participants were told to frown when shown a smiling person. Instead, as you might have already guessed, participants echoed the emotions of the people rather than following the researcher’s instructions.