A Japanese company named Omron has created a device that scans a person’s face, renders a 3D model of it and checks a few critical spots (mouth, eyes etc.) to evaluate if someone is smiling hard enough. Every smile gets a percentage from 0% to 100%, with 100% obviously being the perfect smile (see the picture below). The device, which consists of a small analogue video camera, a sensor unit and a piece of software, is only available in Japan at this point.
It appears this machine simply shows people the difference between a true smile and a fake smile. The fake smile only engages the muscles of the mouth and sends close to 0 nerve impulses to your neo-cortex. As such it does not create any kind of “happy” chemistry (some even say that the fake smile may cause depression). The true smile however (also known as Duchenne Smile) engages both the muscles of the eyes and mouth and does change your chemistry.
If you are a interested in this for your staff because their morale is so low that they are grumpy and depressed all the time please do consider bringing a Laughter Yoga professional in instead. What they will do for you all is far more profound, powerful and long-lasting! Smiling is good. Laughing is better. Understanding that you can do both easily as and when you just because you want to is even better still.
Where Is Tokyo, Japan?
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