Smiling and changing of moods

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Do any of you think that smiling can change a bad mood on its own?

Yes and I have had it happen. I was talking with someone about something sad and she smiled and suddenly I felt a whole lot better. The thing is I think it must be someone you genuinely trust and care about or else its is just another confusiong expression.

I don't know if it can change a bad mood.... sometimes my smiling will irk people though. I am smiling most of the time, but sometimes I'll have this big huge grin for no other reason then I just feel like smiling. Co-workers will wonder why I am smiling, it confounds them. It gets to the point where they are annoyed with me too, asking "why are you always smiling for?" As if its a bad thing to smile...

It doesn't seem as if the way I act has much of an affect on anyone around me... oh well.

I do know that If I don't feel like smiling, my smile always looks forced. And I hate doing that, I don't want to put up a facade. So my smiles are always genuine...

I heard a radio show about this not long ago. There is a type a smile called the Duchenne smile which incorporates the muscles around the eyes and is believed to be a genuine or "felt" smile. If you can control those particular muscles and smile in this way then it will produce a pleasurable sensation of well being. Unfortunately only a small percentage of people can actually control those muscles voluntarily.
Here's one link I found

http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/his ... henne.html
(after reading this I'm thinking this guy might have been aspie)

Right! That's how you can tell a real smile from a fake 'stage' one - look at the eyes.

Practise in the mirror - think about something that really makes you happy and watch what your whole face does. Then, just like an actor, think those happy thoughts when you want to make that face but don't quite feel it naturally.

I think that smiling can indeed change the mood, of yourself and everyone around. As a kid and teen I didn't smile too much, but then I decided to change that and learn to smile more. As a result, most of my smiling is fake (forced), but it is apparently convincing enough. I do move muscles around my eyes. Strangely, this fake smiling improves my mood too, so I sometimes smile this way to myself! The most difficult thing to fake is the lingering of the smile at its end, and making it disappear gradually.

Really?! I can voluntarily control all muscles of my face (at least those that participate in facial expressions). I am shocked to learn that other people can't!

yeah, I do.

Sometimes when people are pissed off at me I will be silly and smile alot, and they will just give up trying to be pissed off.

When Myself or my sister are grumpy, dad says "smile" in a way that can't not make us laugh, and smiles.

It has never.... EVER ... failed.

I'm confused if you mean I smile and it changes my mood, or seeing someone else smile changes my mood. I get confused easily. Anyway, No, I don't smile when I don't feel like it because it is false and that irks me, makes me feel unreal. If someone I care about smiles, it tends to lift my mood some, if what they are saying strikes me as true.