The Mind-Mouth Connection: Say "Happy," Be Happy?

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  • Saying certain vowel sounds seems to affect our emotional positivity or negativity.

  • Saying words with the 'ee' sound can help us feel more positive.

  • Saying words with the 'oo' or 'oh' sound can increase negative feelings.

These days it’s pretty tough to have something to smile about and even tougher to project positivity or any emotions through our masks. This is where speech can actually help us send out a positive or negative vibe, though in a rather unexpected way. Research points to a fascinating link between how the articulation of certain vowels affects our moods. Say happy, be happy? Well, in short, yes, but not because of the meaning of the word, but because we put the ‘ee’ in happy.

The sound of positivity

Studies by German researchers on sound symbolism suggest that simply using a lot of /i/ vowels (which translate to ‘ee’ sounds in speech) in words like pleaseseefeelfree, and happy, make speakers report feeling more positive. Not only did using more ‘ee’ sounds increase positivity ratings, but, when tasked with making up new words, speakers in a better mood (prompted by watching funny movies) invented more using the ‘ee’ vowel than those who watched depressing movies.                                                                                                  

Our names for things also seem to reflect this association, as another German experiment found that subjects make up more /i/-containing names when shown pictures of happy people, i.e., a happy person seems more like a Heidi than a Greta. This suggests that the positive vibe is not derived from of what a word means, but because of how saying the sound itself makes us feel, which also may feed into why so many ‘positive’ words also have ‘ee’ vowels in them (think puppypretty, and glee).  

This mind-mouth connection seems to be a result of the contraction of the zygomaticus major muscle during the pronunciation of a so-called high vowel, causing the same cheeky facial expression involved in making a smile. While this relation between vowels and mood might seem a bit far-fetched, the idea that making a smile-like face affects your emotions is quite old, dating back to emotion theories developed by Darwin and others in the 19th century.

But we seem to have put this idea into action already, without quite knowing why it works. Think of the iconic ‘cheese’ that we say when we pose for pictures. Have you ever wondered why we say cheese? Why not chocolate, which also makes people happy? Well, the word cheese, like glee or free, has a stressed /i/ vowel, forcing the speaker to spread their lips during its articulation, as we do when we smile.  

The sound of negativity

Contrast our smiling 'cheeeeese' with saying a word like 'prunes,' something early photographers had subjects say to capture serious faces and to avoid the often not-so-nice toothy grin of an era before modern dental care. After saying 'prunes' repeatedly for the extended period it took to capture a picture, few of us would likely have been looking so happy. (Maybe now we’ve finally discovered the origin of Ben Stiller’s famous Zoolander pout.)

But why would ‘prunes’ make you pout, at least separate from its side effect on digestion? Well,  prunes, said with an /uw/ (pronounced ‘oo’) vowel, requires lip rounding, which creates more of that ‘Blue Steel’ kind of visage, and stimulates the opposite muscle (the orbicularis oris muscle) from that involved in smiling. 

In fact, research shows that back vowels like /uw/ and, especially, /ow/ (pronounced ‘oh’) increase people’s association with negative valences, in contrast to front vowels like ‘i.’ So, while the vowel in cheese is associated with being positive, 'oo' words like prunes seem to bring up some negative associations.

The feedback loop

This relationship between facial expression and mood is known as the facial feedback hypothesis, and suggests that emotions are not just constituted in the mind, but also in the body. In other words, if your mouth appears to be smiling, the rest of you seems to jump on the bandwagon. Perhaps we can all just try to say ‘pleased to see ye’ instead of hello when we greet each other from behind the mask. That should turn some frowns upside down.

Valerie Fridland Ph.D.