Is Smiling Contagious?

Question: I want to see if smiling is contagious.

Hypothesis: I think that smiling is contagious because smiling is fun to do, and mostly everyone likes to smile! Since yawning is known to be contagious, I think that smiling is too.

Procedure:

1. Go to a crowded area and smile at strangers

2.Count how many strangers smile at me and gather the information

3. Compare groups (boys and girls, Men and Women)

4. See if my hypothesis is correct and make a graph

Abstract:

Is Smiling Contagious?

My project is based on what everyone loves to do. Smile! I wanted to find out if smiling is contagious. I wanted to do this project because after I saw that yawning is contagious I wanted to see if smiling was too. My hypothesis is that smiling is contagious because I think that most people like to smile.

When I did my Science Experiment I wrote down four groups Boys, Men, Girls, and Women. I walked around the mall and the local Shop Rite and smiled at strangers in order to see if they would smile back at me. I kept a log of who smiled and who did not.

To get my data I walk around a crowded or public place and smiled at strangers to see if they would smile back. I did it in groups of Girls and Women and Boys and Men. My data showed that for the Girls I had 11 people smile and 6 who did not. For the women 22 smiled and 18 did not. For the boys 3 smiled and 10 did not. Finally my data showed 7 men smiled back at me and 14 did not smile back at me. My data that I gathered was not what I had expected.

Doing this experiment helped me learn more about if smiling was contagious. I learned that it is not. My data proved that less people smiled then I had expected. My hypothesis was not correct. I thought that smiling is contagious because in my opinion everyone likes smiling. It is fun for me and for most of the people I know. I think my project was accurate because I used a large amount of people. All in all Smiling is not contagious.

Conclusion:

My experiment was Is Smiling Contagious. This experiment was a very interesting topic to me because I love to smile! I am usually a friendly person who would smile at someone if they smiled at me. My project proved that this isn't always true for most people.

Through my research I was able to gather information to find an answer to my question, is smiling contagious? My data showed that more people would not smile back at me than would smile at me. This outcome was not what I expected and proved that my hypothesis was incorrect.

One unexpected issue about my project was how awkward and uncomfortable I felt smiling at strangers. While I was standing there at the local mall and shoprite, I started to understand why strangers weren't smiling back because they felt awkward too.

One way that I could of improved my project was if I used an equal amount of people to smile at. Another way that I could have done it was if I went to an amusement park or a happier venue, maybe people would have been more inclined to smile.