Your Game Face

From Menletter August 2002

By Tim Baehr

Athletes put on "game faces" and use visualization techniques to improve performance. I always thought it was a technique they used to psych themselves up and to intimidate the other team with a fierce scowl. Maybe there's a bit more to it.

An article in a recent New Yorker magazine tells about a couple of guys who were doing research on facial expressions. Their original purpose was to catalog all the possible facial expressions and their meanings. They wanted to see, among other things, whether the meainings of facial expressions were universal across cultures (they are). Their technique included viewing endless hours of film and videotape, and also making faces at each other. This latter technique wasn't so random as it sounds: they cataloged the muscle groups in the face and made their faces based on combinations of particular muscle contractions. When they couldn't make a particular contraction (genetically, not everyone can raise one eyebrow, for instance), they visited a phyisiology lab and had the muscle twitched with an electrode.

One day, after making sad and anguished faces at each other, the two researchers discovered that they felt like shit. Further investigation indicted that facial expressions are not only the mirrors of mood, they could cause moods in the first place. For example, two groups of people looked at cartoons. One group held a pencil between their lips, which prevented them from smiling. The other group held a pencil between their teeth, which forced a smile. The pencil-in-teeth group rated the same set of cartoons funnier.

Remember when Mom said, "Don't make that ugly face at me - it'll freeze that way." She may have been right! Make the awful face - feel shitty - keep making the face - feel shittier. Until the whole thing becomes a habit.

So, I've been trying to smile more, even when I don't "feel" like it.

There are other faces to make, too, that might be helpful in getting through life - or the day. For example, think of a time when you were enveloped in total contentment. Maybe it was after a meal, or after playing with your kids, or at the end of a long run, or love-making, or...well, you get the idea. What kind of face were you "wearing"? Can you make that face now, especially when you're remembering that happy time? Can you make that face when someone has just cut you off in traffic, or when your boss has left your office after a dressing-down? Would it work? I don't know, but I think it's worth a try. I think I now understand the athlete's "game face."