Smiling is typically viewed in universally positive ways. Studies have shown that smiling can reduce stress and blood pressure while also strengthening our immune system. Indeed, people who smile have also been found to appear more competent, likable, and courteous.  Research from Ben-Gurion University suggests, however, that smiling may also make us look older.

“Faces contain an amazing number of social cues. Among the many critical dimensions that people readily extract from faces, age is often considered as primary,” the researchers explain. “Accurate identification of a person’s age is crucial for understanding social roles and determining the nature of social interaction.”

Changing perceptions

The researchers showed volunteers hundreds of faces of people aged between 20 and 80.  The pictures were of people who were either smiling or had a neutral expression.  For each picture, the volunteers were asked to estimate the age of the person involved.

The results show a clear trend towards rating photos of younger people as looking older when they were smiling than when not.  The only time this trend changed was when people were shown pictures of people over 60.  After some images were cropped to just show the eyes, the wrinkles we produce when we smile appear to be the culprit.

“This suggests that older people already have so many facial wrinkles that any smiling-related wrinkles make little difference to their overall appearance and their perceived age,” the researchers explain.

Bucking the trend

Those in the middle ages were not quite so straightforward, however, with gender appearing to play a key part in how people are perceived.  For instance, middle-aged men were perceived to be older when they smiled, but middle-aged women suffered no such penalty.  Again, the researchers argue that wrinkles are likely to play a key role.

“Not only do middle-aged men have more wrinkles than middle-aged women—the prominence of those wrinkles around the eyes increases more when middle-aged men smile than it does when middle-aged women smile,” they say.

They go on to suggest that anatomical and physiological differences in the skin of men and women, plus the different applications of skincare products could affect facial wrinkling in men and women.  This was important as the presence of makeup appeared to play no meaningful role in how people were perceived as most people in the photos were not wearing any.

The researchers believe that their findings reinforce the importance of wrinkles around the eyes in helping us to determine the age of people, with smiling more likely to generate such wrinkles, and therefore influence how we perceive other people’s ages.

“These findings are particularly relevant in the time of COVID when so many people are wearing masks, leaving only our eyes visible,” they conclude.