One of the easiest ways to boost your charisma is to couple eye contact with a smile. But make sure that the smile is genuine. Otherwise, you could get sick.
Phony smiles — especially those that you force when you’re having to endure an on-the-job insult –Â can damage your health, according to a study out of Germany.
Dieter Zapf of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt studied 4,000 volunteers working in a fake call center. Half were allowed to respond in kind to abuse on the other end of the line while the other half had to suck it up, according to a story published by UPI.
Zapf found that those able to answer back had a brief increase in heart rate. Those who could not had stress symptoms that lasted much longer.
“Every time a person is forced to repress his true feelings there are negative consequences,” Zapf said. “We are all able to rein in our emotions but it becomes difficult to do this over a protracted period.”
In other words, ignore the words of Judy Garland.
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