This study showed that people who were physically unable to frown (due to botox injections) took longer to understand sad or angry statements than they did when they were frownable.
Apparently, it’s not a new idea that body and facial movement helps cognition, but this is more pinpointed than other studies.
The article goes on to point out social ramifications: If it takes you a split second longer to frown when your friend tells you a sad tale, does your friend misread your level of empathy?
On the other hand, if you’re really slow on the anger and sadness uptake, does that mean that you’ll generally be a happier person? Will we be getting botox injections instead of happy pills? Will we all wear happy masks grafted onto our faces in order to be happy inside?