Smiling is a global smart language. Everybody smiles in the same language. We smile when we feel good. 【小题1】There's a bidirectional effect between smiling and feeling positive: Both can be reason and effect of the other one.

The act of smiling is connected with neurotransmitters related to pleasure sensations and psychological tensions, as well as with certain stress hormones. 【小题2】 When we smile, even when we force it, our body releases the “feel good” hormones, which will put us in a much better mood and relieve our stress. Meanwhile, our creativity and self-confidence increase, leading us towards the right mental balance we need.

【小题3】 Plentiful evidence shows that smiling can help boost the immune system by decreasing stress levels, which in turn increases white blood cell count and releases beneficial antibodies that help fight infection and disease. Besides, smiling can even reduce our heart rate after a stressful situation.

But positive effects of smiling aren't limited to our own mental and physical well-being: Our smile goes beyond us having a positive effect on the people around. Research suggests that happy people influence the people closest to them and provide a boost of good energy. 【小题4】 When others see us smiling, chances are that we'll find them smiling as well. The more we smile, the more we'll receive smiles back.

Attractive smiles suggest confidence, capability and authority, and these feelings can motivate others. A smile is the prettiest thing we can wear. 【小题5】 When we smile, life smiles as well.

Much meaning can be conveyed, clearly, with our eyes, so it is often said that eyes can speak.

Do you have such kind of experience? On a bus you may look at a stranger, but not too long. And if he is sensing that he is being stared at, he may feel uncomfortable.

The same in daily life. If you are looked at for more than necessary time, you will look at yourself up and down, to see if there is anything wrong with you. If nothing goes wrong, you will feel angry toward others’ stare with you that way. Eyes do speak, right?

Looking too long at someone may seem to be rude and aggressive. But things are different when it comes to staring at the opposite sex. If a man glances at a woman for more than 10 seconds and refuses to avert his gaze, his intentions are obvious: he wishes to attract her attention, to make her understand that he is admiring her.

However, the normal eye contact for two people engaged in conversation is that the speaker will only look at the listener from time to time, in order to make sure that the listener does pay attention to what the former is speaking. As for the listener, he will, to a certain extent, look continuously at the speaker, to tell him that he is attentive.

If a speaker looks at you continuously when speaking, as if he tries to dominate you, you will feel upset. A poor liar usually exposes himself by looking too long at the victim, since he believes in the false idea that to look straight in the eye is a sign of honest communication. Quite the contrary.

In fact, continuous eye contact is confined to lovers only, who will enjoy looking at each other tenderly for a long time, to show affection that words cannot express.

Evidently, eye contact should be done according to the relationship between two people and the specific situation.

“Tie an Italian’s hands behind his back,” runs an old joke, “and he’ll be speechless.” This rests on a national stereotype: Italians are talkative and emotional, and all that arm-waggling supposedly goes to prove it.

Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago has a rather different view. Emotions come out in lots of ways: facial expressions, posture, tone of voice and so on. But people are doing something different when they use gestures with speech, which she sums up in the title of her new book, “Thinking with Your Hands”. It is a masterly tour through a lifetime’s research.

Virtually everyone gestures, not just Italians. Experimental subjects, told after a research session that they were being watched for gestures, apologize for not having made any — but were doing so the entire time. People born blind gesture when they speak, including to each other. A woman born without arms but with “phantom limb syndrome (幻肢综合征)” describes how she uses her phantom arms when she talks — but not when she walks. All this suggests that cognition is, to some extent, “embodied”; thinking is not all done in your head.

In fact, gestures that accompany speech are a second channel of information. Subjects watch a film in which a cat runs but are told to lie and say it jumped. They do so in words — while their hands make a running motion. People who say they believe in sexual equality but gesture with their hands lower when talking about women are not indicating women’s height; they can be shown to have biases of which they may be unaware.

In “The Crown”, a historical drama series, Lady Diana is warned that her hands may betray her real emotions, which could be dangerous; they are tied together so she can learn to speak without gesticulating. No one who reads Susan’s book could ever again think that gesturing shows only a lack of control. It is about thinking and communication, and is a sophisticated aid to both.