Gray Skies are Gonna Clear Up, Put on a Botox Face

Jenny McCarthy, Courtney Cox, Kim Catrall and male celebs like Simon Cowell, too, have all softened their expressions and freed their faces of lines with Botox injections. Ho hum. We’ve long known that Botox holds signs of aging in check but can it also keep bad feelings at bay?

Well, a surprising study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found evidence to suggest that that is oh-so-true. Researchers found that using Botox to paralyze the facial muscles and block a frown also limited the study subject’s ability to process frown-generated feelings like anger and sadness. Whoa. You mean that aside from feeling younger there are other happy side effects to this uber-common cosmetic procedure?

"There is a long-standing idea in psychology called the facial feedback hypothesis," says the study’s author Ph.D. candidate David Havas. "Essentially, it says, when you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you. It's an old song, but it's right. Actually, this study suggests the opposite: When you're not frowning, the world seems less angry and less sad."

In the study, subjects were asked to read sentences that were either happy, sad or angry before and after being injected treated with Botox and it found that either way, subjects could easily process happy sentences, but after Botox treatment, people were slower when it came to reading the angry or sad sentences. In other words, a frozen forehead not only paralyzed muscles, it also limited the ability to process bad feelings, providing a proverbial pair of rose-colored glasses.

It’s easy to understand that in social situations, a Botox-treated frozen face may be difficult to read, but what this study hints at is that it also colors the emotional life of the person themselves. Havas says, "Maybe if I am not picking up sad, angry cues in the environment, that will make me happier."

Scientifically speaking, this study may have broken new ground linking emotion and language, but practically speaking it’s given many just one more reason to make an appointment with the dermatologist.

Maybe we should just all make an effort to smile more. No injections needed...

Photo courtesy of starush via Flickr.