The origin of our smile has always been a fascinating topic. Are there alternative theories about why we smile other than aggression-diffusion/fear response/submission? I ask because, we often smile even though it is solely a behavioral self-confirmation of inner feelings of warmth for another. By example, when we see a toddler, we often are immediately stimulated to "smile to self" - the toddler/infant does not see our gesture, nor in some cases would the "object of our smile" be able to interpret an aggression-diffusion response. We can even tell someone is smiling without ever seeing their mouth or teeth (just by their eyes). I also noticed that a pure evolutionary lens sees the smile as a tool for mate attraction, so since propagation of a species would probably pre-date large social groups or conflicts over resources, why would mate attraction still involve a smile if its purpose were only to diffuse aggression? Could there be multiple origins for the smile?
Data Why we smile?
Thank you, and especially for introducing laughter by extension. In the case of laughter, do you think it could be a special social skill to reduce the amount of /time/ needed to address a larger group at once? Especially before language itself evolved elaboratively, social groups would have needed to facilitate rapid expression of aggression-diffusion somehow (just as you suggest about smiling). I noticed this recent article which to me, suggests this possibility very much: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/421480/the-evolutionary-origin-of-laughter/.
In my studies, I note that the one hallmark of human-cognitive/social-cognitive development (longitudinally), seems to be toward accelerating the rate of response, by reducing the time between need (or goal) and fulfillment. It is evidenced across the single lifespan (reach), and even across the “species lifespan” (genetic expression of temporal reach). This is why prediction, I now think, is the primary human cognitive process (our past perception, our present perception, and our future perception all seem to be predictively constructed – just as our performance in the present is predicated on learning/practice in the past). If smiles are actually social gestures to address “many quickly”, then it seems possible laughter is the verbalization of the social smile, meant to signal (in or out of view) the diffusion of elevating negative group effects that might detract from an urgent group goal. What do you think?
Thanks Sachchidanand for the additional explanation. Laughter does seem to have a variety of uses as an outlet. I look forward to learning more of what you can share about these many social gestures.
There are alternative hypotheses, see, for example, stuff by Robin Dunbar and Marc Mehu. Their idea is that smiling evolved as a cooperative signal..There's quite a but of empirical research for this idea, too!
Thanks Minna - this is very helpful and affirming that both contributive and competitive mindsets may have helped social creatures achieve group goals throughout time. I had been wondering why we so often default to a view of evolved social behavior as being mostly self-motivated and contentious (over sparse resources even when resources must have been plenteous and people sparse) - requiring that the origins of social behavior be aggression-diffusion and similar (a sort of id-like origin). It just seemed to me, after being introduced to these at the nonverbal behavior site especially, we might have had multiple original reasons (a spectrum from more aggressive/externalizing to more contributive/socially amicable, or even out of insecurity/attachment-dependency).
Mehu at el. (2007) suggest that the social smile may have had multiple origins, as most “tools” have probably had. For example, the smile may have been to infer subordinancy (as in Niven/Pournelle’s “Footfall” usage); to appease/reconciliate; or even for attachment confirmation (visual affirmations of congeniality and closeness).
May I ask, Minna and Sachchidanand, do you think it likely that post substantiative bias has led to our collective belief that aggressive responses are more natural than contributive effort? I think of Zimbardo when mentioning this - something that oddly surfaces when we need to “live with the thoughts of our past actions” as the “guards” needed to do at Stanford.
Reference
Mehu, M., Grammer, K., & Dunbar, R. (2007). Smiles when sharing. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 415–422. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2007.05.010.
Thank you - oh yes, courtship displays, thank you for mentioning this as well. Do you think that this spectrum between fight (on one end) and flight (on the other end) is driven by a paradoxical social need for affective-fulfillment vs self-preservation? On one hand, we seem to desperately need constant confirmations of our worth and affective displays of warmth from others to give meaning to all this; and on the other, we are so afraid we will only receive the magnitude desired (negatives like envy, contention, aggression) and not the matching valence (positives like celebration of positive outcome, contribution, affection)? Image management itself seems to be an in-situ flight response using nonverbal messages. Your thoughts on this much appreciated.
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