That friendly smile may not be what it seems…

JUST because someone is smiling at you does not mean they are happy or being nice.

Psychologists have identified three types of smile – and one has more to do with dominance than with being friendly.

A team from Cardiff and Glasgow universities, together with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, created a library of 2,400 computergenerated expressions.

The images were tested on more than 200 people who were asked to describe them.

The three smiles identified in the study are the ‘reward’ smile, the ‘affiliative’ smile and the ‘dominance’ smile.

The first involves a hoist of the cheek muscles with the eyebrows lifted and lips pulled to the side. This is the type you might give to a baby to get them to smile back. The affiliative smile, used when people want to bond, involves spreading the mouth wider and pressing the lips together.

The dominance smile, used to assert authority, involves a lopsided sneer with raised eyebrows and lifted cheeks.

The three cover all bases for the things we need to communicate within human society, according to the researchers.

Lead author Dr Magdalena Rychlowska, from Cardiff University, said: ‘This shows we can group smiles in categories which goes beyond the genuine and the false smile that psychologists have traditionally focused on.’

The study is published in the journal Psychological Science.

‘A sneer with raised eyebrows’