The Guernica Smile
Monday, January 7th, 2008At Picasso´s Guernica, I watched faces in the crowd.
I´ve been curious about whether smiling indicates a subconscious choice has been made — when someone smiles, can you predict what they´ll do next?
For long minutes, I watched four faces — a guy, a gal, and the gal´s two parents. They were facing Guernica intently, just like the folks in the photo above. Then, the girl started to smile — the corners of her until-now somber mouth went up, just like the girl in the photo below – and she turned and spoke to her mother. The guy abruptly left.
Later, the gal smiled, turned and walked away from her parents, still smiling. She smiled bigger as she saw her friend, another girl, standing against the back wall to the right of this arch.
From where I stood in the back-right corner, a sudden smile caught my eye. Another woman, this one in her thirties, smiled, turned, then walked away.
A guy in his early thirties smiled. I waited and counted seconds. One, two, three, four, five…he turned and walked away.
Guernica is not a cheery painting. There isn´t much smiling going on. I stood, sometimes in the back off to the side, but more often in the front-right corner, where I could watch the thirty people in the front row all at once. I could see occasional smiles.
People crowd around and look at the painting for two, five, eight minutes. During this watching time, they rarely smile.
Every time I saw someone smile — by which I mean the corners of their mouth quickly lifted up big in less than a second — they then either turned their neck and head right or left on their shoulders by at least 60 degrees, or moved towards or away from the painting by taking at least three steps. As they walked, the smile stayed on their faces for many seconds.
Not everyone who moved smiled. But everyone I saw smile, then moved big within six seconds and usually within three seconds.
I watched hundreds of people en masse. Over 50 people smiled and moved, and there were over 120 smiles. There were only three exceptions out of the 120 smiles.
The three exceptions:
- a gal in her 20´s smiled, then bobbed her head up and down like a bird, looking at different parts of the picture. She grimaced, froze, then, ten seconds after her smile had started, turned and walked away.
- another gal in her 20´s smiled, turned her head then kissed her boyfriend. He smiled, then turned his head and kissed her cheek. These were 110-degree neck-turn kisses. Then, eight seconds later, she smiled big again, bobbed her head up and down, looking at the picture, but did not move much. Perhaps she was remembering the kiss.
- a 30-year old woman smiled and then turned her head towards her boyfriend. He smiled and turned his head. She turned her head back, then smiled without moving. Probably she was smiling because of their smile-teraction.
Those were the only exceptions. Women smiled more often than men. 97% of the smiles — 117 of 120+ smiles — were followed by a big movement of the neck or walking. That´s a pretty incredible correlation, an amazing match of a smile indicating you can predict what that person is going to do next in a specific situation. You´ll know what the person is going to do before they know themselves.
I am not suggesting that a smile always pre-indicates a big movement in other situations. Folks often smile when they look at Miro´s paintings without moving. But I am saying that at Picasso´s Guernica in the Reina Sofia museum, there is a definite Guernica Smile, and you can bet big money what´s gonna come next.
I do think a smile always indicates a decision of some sort in any situation, but this is the first controlled study I´ve done. Next time you´re at Guernica, stand in the corner, look around, and tell me what happens.
Footnotes: My research was done on December 29, 2007, in the late afternoon. Probably the Guernica Smile indicates a subconscious preparation to move in the presence of an uncomfortable image. I once read that people sometimes smile when they are validating their own assumptions by smiling at something that counters their beliefs — the example being when you read that Madonna’s given birth to aliens from Mars, you smile, because your are reinforcing your belief that this is impossible. I forget where I read this, but it may have been in Steve Denning’s recent book on leadership — he also wrote the incredible Squirrel Inc.
Why am I fascinated by smile-watching?
I´ve been observing ever since I got interested in producing live theatre back in 1998. I started by watching people in the audiences instead of the performances on stage — because I always cared about theatre as being for the people who came to see it — so what turned the people in the audience on, and what did they want to do?
With smiles, I’ve had a hypothesis that when people smile, it correlates with great and exciting interactions with other people, and increases their likelihood of taking an action which they enjoy.
Next, I´ll do some reading on smile research, starting with a book by Paul Ekman.
[Photo credit links: top large photo of smile is by mobender on image44.webshots.com , arch photo , second small photo of the Smile is by ÁLVARO HERNÁNDEZ / ALTERPHOTOS , photo of audience from house right , photo of people pointing ]
Similar Posts:
