"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" "Its 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" "Importantly, 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 50% 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 MlT 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 lnternet" "Do more research -- it's going to be fine" "You couldn't get that on the lnternet either" "When you're smiling When you're smiling" "The whole world smiles with you"