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From: Jennifer Kleinow
Date: 12 Oct 2010
Time: 16:30:14 -0500
Remote Name: 68.82.57.129
Even though I don't have an "answer" to this, I did think it was an interesting question! One thing to think about--emotional smiling and voluntary/forced smiling are controlled by different cortical brain areas. Here's one link that may prove interesting: http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/66/6/887?ijkey=dcea31a6f86c6cf32c52fb740c7a97d93159e2bf&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha Think about how often we've tried to smile for a camera, and how awkward it sometimes looks. That's because we're using the voluntary muscle pathway instead of the emotional one. Even though I don't stutter, I had considerable difficulty with public speaking when I first started teaching. Some of the best advice anyone ever gave me was to "fall in love with the message", to really enjoy your topic. I found that the more I cared about my message, the less I cared about the delivery. I stopped noticing my own voice and breathing patterns that had distressed me so much before. Plus, the more I got into my topic, the more likely I was to smile out of mere enthusiasm. I also genuinely wanted to connect with the audience, no matter what I sounded like. It took me awhile, but now I'm even able to see subtle bits of humor in some the most serious topics, which actually does make me smile (the real kind) here and there. Jennifer