Spot True Smiles

Spot The Fake Smile

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Look at the labels below each image to see which smiles are genuine and which are fake.

Ticks and crosses show which smiles you got right and wrong.

Click on the image if you want to see the smile again.





Most people are surprisingly bad at spotting fake smiles. One possible explanation for this is that it may be easier for people to get along if they don't always know what others are really feeling.

Although fake smiles often look very similar to genuine smiles, they are actually slightly different, because they are brought about by different muscles, which are controlled by different parts of the brain.

Fake smiles can be performed at will, because the brain signals that create them come from the conscious part of the brain and prompt the zygomaticus major muscles in the cheeks to contract. These are the muscles that pull the corners of the mouth outwards.

Genuine smiles, on the other hand, are generated by the unconscious brain, so are automatic. When people feel pleasure, signals pass through the part of the brain that processes emotion. As well as making the mouth muscles move, the muscles that raise the cheeks – the orbicularis oculi and the pars orbitalis – also contract, making the eyes crease up, and the eyebrows dip slightly.

Lines around the eyes do sometimes appear in intense fake smiles, and the cheeks may bunch up, making it look as if the eyes are contracting and the smile is genuine. But there are a few key signs that distinguish these smiles from real ones. For example, when a smile is genuine, the eye cover fold - the fleshy part of the eye between the eyebrow and the eyelid - moves downwards and the end of the eyebrows dip slightly.

Scientists distinguish between genuine and fake smiles by using a coding system called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which was devised by Professor Paul Ekman of the University of California and Dr Wallace V. Friesen of the University of Kentucky.

Body Composition for Health

80/20 Rule for Body Composition

80% of your body composition (lean mass + fat) is the result of diet while 20% is from exercise. Diet enables you to change your weight, to build muscle mass or to burn fat, while exercise is a tool to manipulate further change, to demand the growth of muscle or to accelerate fat loss.

This does not mean exercise is minimized or excluded, however, and should always be paired with diet. Exercise provides numerous mental and physical health benefits and should always be part of your lifestyle.

Your Weight

Your body weight does not consist of just muscle and fat, but also water, blood, organs, waste, tissue, and bones. Your scale tells you your weight, but it doesn’t tell you how much of it is lean muscle and how much of it is fat. If you gain or lose a few pounds over the course of the day, it is likely just fluctuations of water weight. It is best to measure progress week-by-week, first thing in the morning. Please be aware that you can expect to naturally and realistically burn up to 2 lbs of fat per week (the obese can burn more) or build 0.5 lbs of muscle per week.