A new research has indicated that smiling at one person can always help to strike up a new relationship.
According to the study, it works because people are much more attuned to positive emotions when forming new bonds than they are to negative ones such as anger, contempt or sadness.
The study led by Belinda Campos of the University of California, Irvine, in the US that sheds light on how relationships are formed and maintained.
Campos' team conducted two studies to test the role that positive emotions, which are considered signals of affiliation and cooperation, play in relationships and showed that dating couples were able to quite accurately track their partners' positive emotions.
In the second test, people tended to feel closer to strangers who displayed positive emotions and the results showed that people are much more aware of others' positive emotions than their negative ones. Also, when finding themselves in situations where new relationships can be formed, humans tune into the positive almost instinctively. A display of awe especially draws strangers to one another.
Campos explained that people predominantly display positive emotions by giving a so-called Duchenne smile. This distinct smile involves the simultaneous movement of two facial muscles around the eyes and cheeks, and is primarily produced when people are sincere and happy.
The study is published in Springer's journal Motivation and Emotion.
