Original subtitles

Standing around enjoying yourself with friends

There is nothing quite like it

Catching up, joshing each other, having a laugh,

seeing them laugh, just enjoying their company face-to-face

Yet in today's world

all too often we cut ourselves off from other people

We forget the benefits of being with others

I'll be finding out why being face-to-face is so very important

and why making expressions connects us with other people

and how facial expressions can alter the way we feel

Our facial expressions promote facial expressions from other people

When I smile at you, almost immediately,

there is a smile comes back to me

We'll see how transforming your expressions can transform your marriage

and we'll explore the benefits of a good laugh

And now live from the heart of London's West End its

Secrets Of The Face

Good evening Tonight I shall be demonstrating

how to make and read facial expressions

with help from my assistant Janet

Hello. That's a smile

But first a question

Why is it that so few soap operas feature crocodiles?

Hello love

Hello dear

You look fed up

How can you tell? I was just guessing

The problem with crocodiles as dramatic actors

is that they only have one expression

and that's three less than Michael Palin

They are solitary creatures that

don't need to be able to communicate subtly with their fellow crocs

Most humans however are interested in slightly

more than just sex and violence

We like to communicate

In fact, we like it so much

we can create over 7000 different facial expressions

And Janet will now demonstrate a selection of them

Sadness

Contempt

Melancholic resignation with undertones of knowingfulness moderated

by envy and puzzlement mixed with guilty compassion plus a hint of irony

No, that's helpless astonishment

I told them to get Judi Dench

Never mind. Moving on

Now, the reason that the human face can produce so many expressions

is the way that it is constructed

The face consists of 44 muscles and two bones:

The skull and the jaw

But unlike any other part of the body these muscles are not attached to the bone

and so they are able to float freely

giving them the huge mobility that gives us facial expression

Now most of us can make expressions easily and effortlessly

Can I have my face back please?

Certainly

Give you the chance to practise with it

So, it comes as a shock to discover that

some people have great difficulty doing this

Lauren Deveney suffers from Mobius syndrome

The nerves that make her facial muscles move are paralysed

so she can't really make any expressions at all

We found out she had Mobius

about an hour and a half after she was born

There was apparently a very wonderful neonatologist

on the staff at that time

and she came and told us

and it all sounded horrid and awful and she wouldn't do this, she wouldn't do that

The way we explain it to people who just,

on the street or in the grocery store, or people who don't know about Lauren,

she was born with Mobius syndrome which gives her several characteristics:

She does have full facial paralysis,

her eyes do not move left to right,

she doesn't blink as often

and her eyes do not close all the way

It's hard to imagine not being able to move your face

I've tried to imagine it several hundreds of thousands of times and it's just,

nearly impossible to imagine how would your face feel if you couldn't move it

Lauren's parents are really worried about

how she is going to get on with other kids

I'm just afraid that, you know, she may get teased a lot and,

that whole social scene and friends and cliques and all that type of thing

I think that without facial expression they will perceive her

as being retarded, stupid, not paying attention, not interested

It's amazing that you don't realise how much your face does express your feelings

But Sharon and Dan have found a surgeon in Canada

who may be able to put a smile on Lauren's face

I would definitely like her to be able to smile the first day of school

It would be a lot less pressure on her

It would be a lot less pressure on everyone, basically

Lauren and her family

drive to Toronto for her operation

I hear there is an ice skating rink near our hotel

Do you think we should go ice skating before your surgery? Yeah

We'll have to go before your surgery

because you'll be in the hospital room afterwards

All right, round the corner there

So this is our room

You can open your eyes

Dr Ronald Zuker has helped pioneer

an operation that can give facial movement

to people like Lauren

Our facial expressions promote facial expressions from other people

So for example, when I smile at you,

almost immediately, there is a smile that comes back to me

and if you are unable to make a smile

then you are unable to have that interaction

And that interaction is crucial for the development of self-esteem

Now I want you to give me the biggest smile at you can

Big smile. Lots of teeth

Okay, now I want you to squint as hard as you can,

squint your eyes closed as hard as you can

I want you to turn around and face that monkey now

You see that monkey over there?

Now give me another big smile

Look at that monkey

I just want you to look at the monkey and give me a smile. Smile at the monkey

We take a segment of the muscle from the thigh

and we transplant it to the face, supporting the lower lip,

which improves drooling, supporting the corner of the mouth,

which also helps with oral competence,

and putting it into the corner of the mouth and upper lip so that

when it contracts it will lift up the lower lip and help with speech and,

perhaps most importantly,

it will lift up the corner of the mouth and upper lip and simulate a smile

Okay, here she comes. Sit still Here it is, you see, it is warm. Okay?

By the summer she'll have a full smile

and then for the first day of school, it would be September,

and that will be an amazing day, I think, for her to go to school

and have a smile to show how happy she is

Were going to take you in now, okay? Say bye to mummy

I love you. Good girl

Okay. Here we go

It will be six months before Sharon will find out

if Lauren's surgery will make her smile.

It's not going to be a natural smile

It's going to be black or white, you know,

she is either smiling or she has her porcelain face

But I think that even that, as small as it is,

is going to be a very great thing for her

Lauren's inability to make expressions means that

she's unable to send out signals

we'll use to communicate how we're feeling

Facial and body language say more about us the words ever do

but faces are also more ambiguous in a meaning

What is she thinking? Or him?

Now he certainly doesn't look very friendly

She's completely different, obviously thinking happy thoughts

What about this guy?

Look at the way he is doing his hair, he is clearly full of himself.

Oh no, he's a happy man about to make a success of his day

Happy! That man? Oh don't be so silly and pompous

You always make yourself sound so ridiculous

So, suspicion,

apprehension,

what?

Hurt resentment

Yes, very good

So this is our problem isn't it?

Our facial expressions are supposed to communicate our feelings

but communication only takes place if the other person reads our face correctly

And often human beings are not very good at that

That's an excuse, it doesn't matter, you said twice a year

That's what you told me But why would I worry about, I've told you

It's true It isn't.

It is It isn't

Well what is it then?

On the 29th of February she proposed to me

but I had a good idea she would

and I actually had a ring ready for her

and I accepted

We used to make each other laugh all the time

We were always having a laugh and a joke

Recently I haven't, I don't know, I've not been happy at all

And neither has he, eventually, come down to the fact that he wasn't either

And we are just getting nowhere at all

I think the business is a massive strain on us

Yeah, maybe

I try and make sure there's nobody there when he comes home from work

because I know he doesn't like people there

Now... But then if there is...

Now it's better But it wasn't like that before.

Yeah, but there wasn't for a while, and all of a sudden there was, a one-day,

and you flipped. It wasn't one-day, it was three days on the trot.

But that's because they were waiting for a lift home

You know, it is my house as well

You don't have complete control like you think you do

No, that's excuses It isn't

Dr John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of Seattle,

believes that when couples argue

it's not what they say

but what is shown on their faces that really matters

The way it works is almost unconscious,

I mean, a lot of times people don't really realise that,

you know, when they look at their partners brow,

you know, that they see distress their,

you know, and they don't register that's distress in a conscious way

they just realise that, you know,

they feel uncomfortable,

they'd like to leave, you know, or they feel fed up,

or they're tired of this response,

they don't really know where those emotions are coming from

But there is really a stream of emotional communication

that's going back and forth and all of that information

is being processed and being understood by the brain and coming

and affecting each person's behaviour and physiology

Sometimes I do think, you know, because we're getting on so bad,

that if somebody better than the comes along

then maybe she'll go for it, you know

I can't make her happy, somebody else can

I went to the solicitors to file for divorce

because I couldn't see any other option at the time

Mandy and Eden are going to visit Dr Gottman

in a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage

I'm hoping it's gonna give us a bit more understanding of each other

and the way things are said and the way things, the way we go about it,

discussion in general, or the whole, everything really

This is the marital research laboratory

This is where we bring our couples And we bring them to this room

where we them up to different physiological sensors

so we can see what kinds of physiology is going on when they are arguing

And we are also videotaping them so that we can look at the different kinds

of emotion that they are expressing during the communication

One of the things that we're really looking for is

what kinds of non-verbal things are they doing when they talk with each other

Mandy and Eden are wired up to monitoring devices

so the scientists can see how their bodies change when they argue

Observers watch and analyse the couples facial expressions

to try and discover what it is they really feel about each other

It's hard for me Yeah, but you do...

It's hard for me, but then like, if you say to me, all right...

You're just agreeing with what your mum said

To a certain degree, not with everything.

You didn't, before...

You don't want me to go to town for a few hours,

because you don't understand why I have to be in town

I have done. I have done and I know it for a fact that I probably went over the top

Facial expressions are really important I mean, obviously the face is,

you know, one of the most important things we look at

We don't put pictures of the feet of people we love on our walls,

you know, we put pictures of their faces,

usually they're smiling

And we saw with this couple, you know, that there were really

certain characteristic facial expressions both of them had that reveal,

you know, how they are really feeling about their marriage at the moment

Yeah, you should want to say to me, I'm going down to town

I shouldn't have to tell you when I'm going down town

So we see the Darwin grief muscle, we see the inner corners coming up

and together and the medial inverted horseshoe figure in the brow

But it made her feel was really hopeless and kind of disgusted and fed up

You know, there he goes again,

you know, feelings said and upset

She was kind of tired of that

On Mandy's face,

Dr Gottman notes signs of disgust and contempt

Prevalence of contempt is really one of our best predictors of divorce

and also a very good predictor of the amount of infectious illnesses

that the recipient of contempt has in the next four years

So contempt is really quite unhealthy

Dr Gottman explains to Mandy and Eden

had their physiology changes when they argue

Your heart rate goes up to 136 beats per minute

You are not in a treadmill, you're sitting down talking to him

What is normal for a woman is about 80

Yeah, and yours went into 125 beats per minute during your discussion

Now, when your heart rate gets above 100 beats per minute,

this is true for both men and women, and a healthy heart, you know,

that's when your body is secreting adrenaline,

and you get into this physiological state

that makes it impossible view to listen

But who's the one who kept a diary while I was working?

What I'm really saying to this couple

is contempt and disgust that is unaddressed,

unless that changes in the contents days and she's fed up,

and we see this reflected in her really thinking very seriously

about divorce and about leaving

Now Mandy and Eden know that they are making

these destructive expressions

they can learn to stop doing so

and perhaps save their marriage

I think it is really difficult to suppress expressions of contempt and disgust

that I think you can become aware of them and by talking about those feelings,

you know, the expressions will change as well

The fact that I need to listen more

is more important than I probably realised before today

I think he will try I'll help him so hopefully...

The faces of contempt, sadness and disgust, are particularly powerful

because they belong to a small group of expressions

that immediately trigger a deep,

almost primeval response in all of us

The other expressions to do this are happiness, surprise, anger and fear

Let's take a look at real fear

Janet

I happen to know she has a morbid dread of squirrels

Put it away That's disgusting

Does her expression of fear affect you?

Well it should

Scientists now know of fear is recognized

in one of the oldest parts of the brain, the amygdala

So, of course,

they stuffed me in an MRI scanner to prove it

John, the first experiment we will do,

we'll show you some fear faces

When I'm first in the scanner

there's no real activity in my amygdala,

but what happens when I'm shown fearful faces

I'm not conscious of feeling any emotion

that the scanner's shows that

my amygdala has been stimulated

This send signals to other parts of my body which means

I react without consciously realising I'm doing so

But what would it be like if this didn't happen?

At Cambridge University I met a student who has just this problem

I have difficulty working out

what people are feeling of thinking better time

Some people would call that

mind reading I guess

And I also have difficulty making

expressions and knowing what is appropriate non-verbal social behaviour

like what kind of eye contact is appropriate

Chris suffers from Asperger's disease, a mild form of autism,

that means he can't recognise emotions on other people to faces

Look what happens to his brain when he is shown the same images as me

Nothing

When I'm in a social situation I usually feel very nervous are anxious,

especially if I'm around people I don't know well

I'll just try and pick up cues off other people

because most of the time I really don't know how to behave at all

I just have to sort of be quiet and watch

I think I've found some emotions more difficult than others:

Fear, anger, surprise

because they are quite similar

in the way the people express them, especially when they are mild

It can be really small cues that lets you tell between them,

I guess, because I'm not picking them up

That's very interesting because if I do this, what you think that is?

It looks like fear and possibly a little bit of surprise as well

I don't know

How would you tell the difference?

Well it is say that was fear and maybe not surprise?

Well, I would say was fear, because your, the corners of your mouth were down-turned

If your mouth had been opened instead then it would have been,

I would have thought it was surprise

Interesting So you've got the fear

from the corners of my mouth turning down?

Yes, yes

That's fascinating. So you have to kind of learn it a brick the time

Yeah, exactly And then you can begin//to put it together

Yeah, it is really hard work to learn

It is really difficult because no one writes books about these things,

at least none that I've read

Everybody just seems to assume that it comes naturally to everyone

I have profound respect for the way Chris is teaching himself

to connect with people to avoid the risk of ending up isolated

It was the fear that their daughter would suffer social isolation

that prompted Lauren Deveney's parents to put her through major surgery

It's cold outside

I'm not cold That's good

lts now six months since she had the operation

which promised to give her the ability to smile

Today, is a big day, her first day at a new school

We were out running some errands

and she told me that she could smile

I was quite surprised and I said Lauren, when did this happen?

She told me that she had been looking in the mirror the past few days

and had noticed that it started working

And I said well, why didn't you tell me?

I can't believe you waited a couple of days to tell me

Welcome to your first day at kindergarten boys and girls

So I asked her about five times to show me her new smile

because it was hopeful smile and I was just so impressed with it,

and she said I wish I wouldn't have told you

She could now smile again and again and again

We smile for many different reasons

and yet there is only one smile

that is the true smile of enjoyment

There is the listen and response smile, where you smile to encourage the speaker

There is the polite smile that you give people, you know,

when your aunt gives you a tie at Christmas,

you say thank you so much

Then there is what I called the miserable smile

This is the smile you give the dentist when the dentist

says you need a root canal,

it's gonna hurt a lot and cost a lot of money

That's one you might recognize from President Clinton

So there are smiles to cover of what you are feeling

So sorry you didn't get that Oscar nomination

Up yours granddad

We usually know that its fake

but nevertheless it somehow serves the purpose

The great thing about the masking smile is that it is so easy to fake

It simply involves tightening these two muscles here

Like that

And there is one other way to achieve this

The genuine enjoyment smile, on the other hand, is incredibly hard to fake

And getting it right can make a lot of difference

Take a look at these photographs

Can you guess which of these women

was happiest 40 years later?

Well, an amazing study conducted over four decades by psychologists

at the University of Buckley, near San Francisco,

discovered that whether we really smile or not in a single moment,

the taking of a photograph, can predict the happiness of our whole lives

What is striking is that we find that

the intensity of smile aged 21

relates to the tendency for women to feel less negative emotion

all the way up to aged 52

We looked at the amount of positive emotion that young women

showed in their college yearbook photos

and we related that to their reports of their emotional lives later on in life,

their likelihood of getting married, how happy they were in their marriage

and how happy they were in their life in general

More specifically, we coded for the presence of two muscle actions:

The zygobatic major, which pulls the lip corners up, and then importantly,

the orbiculas occuli, which circles the eye

and when that contracts we know that that feels,

is correlated with the experience of pleasure

My name is Diana Odermat

and I am part of the Mills class of 1960

What you see with this woman here is you see sort of

a moderate intensity muscle movements that's pulling the lip corners up

I live in Berkeley with my husband

and we were married right after graduation in 1960

lmportantly, you also see, with the bulging underneath the eye,

and a little bit of crows feet,

is that the orbiculas occuli muscle is also involved

I have two lovely children

who are now also married and have children of their own

This person would have received a fairly high score

in terms of intensity of positive expression

I describe myself as being enthusiastic and positive,

one who always thinks the glass is half full

Judy Rapsmith,

I went to Mills College, graduated 1960

Now this woman, I think you'll see a little bit of difference

in terms of the nature of the expression What is striking is that

we find that the muscle action on the lips is about the same intensity that

you don't see the signs of that action on the muscle that surrounds the eyes

I got married to the wildest man I could find

I got a divorce in our forties and so I was a single mother

My name is Betty Anne Wong

and I graduated from Mills College in 1960

Once again, you don't see the visible bulging, the crows feet,

or the glisten in the eyes.

I'll be having incredibly wonderful news and the very next day

it's a just be rock bottom

I have not been married as yet

Our study, rather provocatively,

suggests that these women might marry later,

perhaps a little more prone to experience negative emotion,

and perhaps a little less well-being, in their lives

The genuine smile of enjoyment not only makes us feel good

but it also makes others feel good

This suggests that being good at making and reading expressions

is an important skill for any social animal

but why is it so important?

The facial expression originally had, and still has,

a really important social function

And not necessarily a consciously directed one

That is to say it is of benefit to a group to know if an animal,

if a member of that group, is, what shall we say, frightened

And if they turned round and see that this creature,

his companion of theirs, is frightened about something, it's very useful

So the ability to make facial expressions involved to save lives

but we often use this skill to manipulate others

Sometimes you want to convey what it is your feeling, sometimes you don't,

but if you are able to simulate feelings by your face,

you know how to put it on, and a so that is then used, can be used,

consciously by an individual in order to send signals

which also may, or may not, be truthful

What Sir David is talking about here is lying

Now here is a little test

On this video of pictures

either of happy chimpanzees frolicking in the jungle

or a rather bloody heart transplant operation

and I don't know which it is so let's see

Oh, it's the chimps

Yeah, two of the little ones are fighting

and there's a big one there who is wondering whether he should,

one of them just hit the,

well, one of them'd getting quite cross

So would you like to watch the film too?

Have another look

Oh, it's the chimps

Yeah, two of the little ones are fighting

and there's a big one there who is wondering whether he should...

Could you have told just by looking at my face that I was lying?

That's very pleasant

In a similar test,

Paul Ekman set out to find how good people were at spotting liars

...very pensive

I took nursing students in what I did was

to show them the worst scenes of medical gore that they might encounter

and while they watched that they had to convince the interviewer

they were talking to, who couldn't see what they were seeing,

that they were watching the nature film

Now, I also had them see one of these nature firms and describe it honestly

How you feeling now?

The same

Paul Ekman asked various people

affected the liars from this experiment

This is the moment when this young woman gives herself away,

she's lying, but could they tell

And this is how non-experts like us scored

No better than chance

Okay, so now we come to the experts

People whose professions have giving them special experience with lying:

Police, judges, trial lawyers, forensic psychiatrists

and the experts who actually carry out lie detector tests

And here is how they scored

Judges!

Forensic psychiatrists:

Now police

the experts who carry out lie detector tests,

nobody could pick the liars, it's amazing,

except one group:

One-third of Secret Service agents

scored 80 percent

That's seriously good

So what do they know that nobody else does?

Using more recent footage

Ekman can show us what the secret agents were spotting

There is one sign of concealment and that is a micro-expression,

an expression that is very reduced in time, about a 25th of a second is typical,

while the normal facial expression is a half second to two or three seconds

In this experiment, we found out what people had the strongest convictions about

The particular person I'm gonna show you it was about capital punishment

And then they were given the choice

to either truthfully describe their opinion

or to lie and claim to hold the exact opposite of their opinion

So let's take a look at it

Personally, I think that they should be killed, I mean, should be executed

Well, we've already seen a little micro-expression in the forehead

and let me just back that up

Now it's those little wrinkles, they've gonna appear there

They're very fast and you realize what he is saying is,

personally, I believe they should be executed

Now, if he's telling the truth, and confident about this,

that probably shouldn't be occurring

They should be killed, I mean...

Okay, that was a distress expression

The corners going up, short wrinkles in the centre the forehead, okay

We have the equipment to see these things

I can teach anyone in 30 minutes

to see micro-expressions

which they didn't see before

When I teach policeman it's the thing they like the most

because 30 minutes later they can do things they couldn't do before.

I want you to listen to me,

I'm gonna say this again,

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, with that woman...

Paul Ekman can teach is how to spot

the hidden emotion in an expression

but some societies seem determined

to teach their citizens had to hide their emotions

and here is a surprise: This isn't England

For a long time the Japanese have emphasised the importance of the stiff

upper lip in a way that makes the British one seem positively floppy

What's the point?

What you've got is a large amount of people really crammed into a small

amount of place that's liveable where people need to co-operate

with each other and they need to live harmoniously with each other

and so instead of seeing anger or disgust or sadness he was here masked for example,

by smiles or even neutralised, showing nothing on the face

In Japan, the need to control ones expression even extends into their sport

In the martial art of Kendo, the skill of controlling one's own expressions

and observing those of one's opponents, is given priority of the physical prowess

It's very interesting because you've got two masters are facing off at each other,

basically staring at each other,

and one who has more confidence in winning will not budge

The one that budges or flinches will be the one that ultimately loses

But things in Japan are changing

The West is increasingly influencing Japanese lifestyles

And the Japanese are beginning to abandon the idea

that expressing emotion is a bad thing

And indeed some of them are learning how to smile in a western fashion

For a long time, expressing natural feelings was an embarrassing thing

In olden times men were not supposed

to show their teeth when they smiled

Women painted their teeth with black paint

so they didn't look as though they were smiling

They also shaved off their eyebrows and painted false ones up here

These old practices explain that

expressing true feelings was considered to be a bad thing

I was working at the sales headquarters of a company

which was developing a nationwide retail chain

I came to realise that we could sell more by smiling more

Actually you can boost sales

by 30 to 50o/o by smiling

I first explain how important it is to smile

I explain to them what good things a smile can bring you

Then we practise smiling

I really think it should be taught in schools and houses

If mothers don't show their children how to smile

who will?

Biting chopsticks is clearly an unnatural way of trying to look happy

but it is necessary if you didn't pick up how to smile as a kid

Most of our children learn how to express themselves

by being face-to-face with their parents

but in the modern world this kind of contact is being neglected

Instead of doing traditional things like playing with dolls

and fighting kids

are spending increasing amount of time with electronic games

We are learning that

this can cause relationship problems later in life

Well, the techies have finally realised that

technology causes social problems

so they have come up with a solution

Naturally enough, a technological one

Here at MIT in Boston, scientists are developing a robot

called Kismet which can actually make facial expressions

Hello Kismet, I am John

Kismet, can you be happy?

Can you look sad?

The point about building Kismet

is to try to build a socially intelligent machine,

a sociable machine

For me, what that means is that a robot that is naturally intuitive for people

to interact with, just like you would another person,

as well as to teach and learn from

What else can you do?

Can you show me tired?

What about...

boo... surprise!

We require a lot of feedback when we interact with someone to try to understand

what is going on in their head: How are they responding to me,

do they like what I am saying, do they not like what I am saying?

What do you think of me Kismet?

Disgusting! Naughty Kismet! I shall take your batteries out

It's a question of if you alone for a long period of time,

no matter what you are doing,

I don't think it's healthy

We just, again, we've such a social species It's important for us

to interact with people to feel like we've part of a community

It gives, in some sense, an enrichment to our lives

that I don't think you can neglect

When I have to go now Kismet, I expect that will make you sad

Bye-bye

I fell in love with Kismet,

of course, but deep down I don't think technology is the answer

More computers mean

less real human facial feedback

and when we are denied that there can be all sorts of consequences

What's your bloody game? Come on

Ever since cars were first invented people have been trying to work out

why it is that we all behave much worse when we are driving than we do normally

You bastard!

I mean take road rage

That sort of thing just doesn't happen among pedestrians

When two pedestrians collide,

there's none of that anger they received by motorists cross one another's path

I mean, just think what it would be like

it pedestrians started behaving like motorists

Excuse me

Now why don't we actually get pavement rage like this?

Well, I have a theory

Let's have a look at those pedestrians again

Thank you

When pedestrians collide there is no aggression

because they are able to exchange little signs of apology

which you can't see when you are trapped in a car

The same kind of misunderstandings can easily happen on e-mail

The style of e-mail is terse and informal

so often people get annoyed

when no rudeness was intended because they can't see the expression

on the face of the person they are communicating with

This problem has now become so widespread that

e-mailers now send little signs

to show they are being friendly

And what do they send? Faces

So this is the problem What is the solution?

The answer is that about the only chance we've got is to meet face-to-face

Good evening

Good evening

The benefit of seeing each other's faces just can't be underestimated

We are social animals

That's why the punishment most feared in prison is solitary confinement

When we are with our friends they cheer is up,

we laugh more,

and that is not just nice at the time

it's good for us in all sorts of unexpected ways

And these benefits are being studied in India by a doctor who's

become almost obsessed by the idea that after really is the best medicine

And he organises groups that meet every morning just to laugh

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

Ready...

start!

So how many laughter clubs have you got?

We have over 600 laughter clubs in India

Really? And maybe 800 all over the world

Line up there again

We will attack Mr John Ready... start!

This 15 to 20 minutes of laughter session

makes you feel fresh throughout the day

You inhale more oxygen

and it has been proved by scientific studies

that laughter helps you to unwind the negative effects of stress

and also it boosts your immune system

And all these minor symptoms of coughs, colds, sore throats

and infections will go down significantly

We'll do laughter, please, you have to drink

In laughter exercises we do start with fake laughter,

a kind of forced laughter,

but when you laugh in a group,

you have good eye contact, it turns into real

So half of it is made and half of it is real

But does it matter from the point of view of the benefits?

Same set of happy chemicals are released whether the laugh is forced

or whether the laugh is real

So the body doesn't know the difference?

Yes, that's incredible!

Yeah! That is so weird Yes

So you can get away with it by faking it you still get the good effects?

Yes. We have a slogan called fake it, fake it until you make it

Well, you all know what a good laugh feels like

but what struck me was how easy it was to get started

because when you have a lot of friendly, warm, funny faces coming at you,

you respond very naturally

And a lot of the time when we are with people

we like we laugh although there isn't anything very funny going on

Although of course the whole thing is wonderfully ridiculous

Dr Kattari's mission

is leading to set of clubs in unusual places

He invited me to attend the first session with a lovely group of murderers,

rapists and robbers in a Bombay prison

The prisoners have a lot of depression

They are away from their family and they have got a lot of anger

inside the laughter helps you to allay your anger feelings

Ready... start!

Sitting here, I found myself wondering

do we really want villains to be having quite such a good time?

Then I remembered the people who are supposed to benefit from this

are not just the prisoners but also the prison staff

I was struck by how laughter connected with people

It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance

or any sense of social hierarchy when you are just howling with laughter

Laughter is a force for democracy

Coming home from India set me thinking:

Better physical and mental health, fitting in,

understanding each other, sorting out problems,

feeling better about ourselves

So many reasons for us to seek out face-to-face contact

But what's happening in our society today?

We are more solitary than we have ever been before

And what is turning us into a race of hermits?

Technology!

All our lives are now run by computers

We sit their staring at screens for hours and hours

avoiding any real communication with other people

And even when we are in the most intimate situations

technology gets in the way

Worst of all, we listen to advice on the direction that our society

should be taking which comes from the most successful computer nerds

We are so cowed by technology

that we think these nerds know more than we do

We know that all important human matters

take place face-to-face

but they don't tell us that do they?

Oh no! No! They pretend that anyone who is not a nerd,

who actually likes being with people, is some kind of prehistoric loony

Thank you Janet. I needed that

And you couldn't get that on the Internet

Do more research - it's going to be fine

You couldn't get that on the Internet either

When you're smiling When you're smiling

The whole world smiles with you