Turns Out, Faking a Smile Might Not Make You Happier After All

The hypothesis, called the facial-feedback hypothesis, dates back to a 1988 study in which participants rated the humor of cartoons while inadvertently mimicking either a smile or a pout. The failure of an idea to hold up in a replication study, however, rarely settles the question of whether or not a result is valid. The originator of the facial-feedback hypothesis, psychologist Fritz Strack of the University of Würzburg in Germany, argued that the replication study changed enough of his o