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[00:00.38] They're not the same, are they?

[00:02.24] The smiles you see when you meet your friends and family compared with what you see from salespeople trying to get you to buy something or management consultants pretending that the bad news they're giving you is actually good news.

[00:16.32] How can we tell that someone really means it when they're smiling?

[00:26.41] There are physical differences between types of smiles.

[00:28.01] 19th Century French neurologist, Guillaume Duchenne, spotted that there are two sets of muscles that are used for smiling.

[00:30.66] Unsurprisingly, one set of muscles moves the corners of your mouth. The other tightens the skin around your eyes.

[00:38.10] He noticed that only genuine smiles triggered the muscles around the eyes, leading a real smile to be named a Duchenne smile.

[00:51.65] Later research suggests that there are two pathways to triggering these sets of muscles.

[00:54.04] Those that are around the mouth can be set off voluntarily, while those around the eyes are triggered involuntarily and almost always by our emotions.

[01:04.66] A genuine smile has certain physical signs.

[01:08.12] Typically, if a smile is real, then people's cheeks are pulled up, the skin under their eyes bulges, and crow's feet can be seen at the corners of their eyes.

[01:18.74] Smiles that aren't genuine often disappear suddenly rather than fading gradually.

[01:24.58] These fake smiles are not caused by emotions, but they can get mixed with signs of the emotions that someone is genuinely feeling, like a wrinkled forehead caused by worry.

[01:36.01] Even ten-month-old-babies have shown that they can identify a real smile.

[01:41.05] It may be that we have evolved to spot genuine emotion.

[01:45.04] There's clearly a benefit in being able to identify who to trust, and who may be trying to deceive us.

[01:50.62] That's not to say that fake smiles are always a problem.

[01:54.33] They can help to smooth over difficult situations and maintain politeness.

[01:59.12] But there are times when it's good to know that a smile really means something.