One shot removes wrinkles and emotions

(Bliznetsov)

According to a new, small study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, botox injections aren’t just preventing wrinkles or making you look younger, they are also deadening emotions and causing slower reactions.

On January 29 at SPSP 2010, the 11th annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Las Vegas, Nevada the research of David Havas, a doctoral candidate in psychology and Arthur Glenberg, UW-Madison professor emeritus of psychology and advisor to Havas was presented, "Embodied mechanisms of social cognition: cosmetic use of botulinum toxin affects emotional language processing ." The study basically found a direct link between zapping a nerve that produces a frown and a delay in comprehending a statement that would produce a frown.

Havas told insciences.org, an online group for the open exchange of international research, "essentially, [facial feedback] says, when you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you… actually, this study suggests the opposite: when you're not frowning, the world seems less angry and less sad."

Havas continued, "language has traditionally been seen as a very high-level, abstract process that is divorced from more primitive processes like action, perception and emotion… this study shows that far from being divorced from emotion, language understanding can be hindered when those peripheral bodily mechanisms are interrupted."

Important to note, others will sense the slow uptake of anger or sad situations and might find it calming, annoying or perceive you as not so intelligent but you will look and feel good.

Manuscript under review, "Embodied mechanisms of social cognition: cosmetic use of botulinum toxin affects emotional language processing": http://psych.wisc.edu/glenberg/Papers/Havas.et.al_proof.pdf