Smiling, is there anything more pleasant to see? People smile to communicate that they are happy, that they are content or that they are not a threat to others. When you smile at someone you expect them to smile back. This one observation is what this sample science fair project will explore more thoroughly.

Hypothesis

The development of a smiling science fair project hypothesis needs to begin by making general observations of how people respond to the smiling of others. As mentioned earlier most people assume that if they smile at someone that the other person is going to smile back. This is why the selected hypothesis for this science fair project is, “smiling is contagious regardless of the person’s sincerity.”

In this hypothesis the independent variable, or the variable that will be manipulated, will be the sincerity of the person smiling, and the dependent variable, or the variable being measured, will be the percentage of people who smile back.

Experiment

The control for this experiment is pretty easy to set up. It will involve the observation of people in the test environment. The goal of this experiment is to determine a baseline set of data of how many people smile without provocation in the setting. The setting can be a school, a restaurant or a mall.

The test experiment is slightly more difficult to set up. Since gender may impact the results both male and female test subjects will need to be recruited. You will interview each test subject at the start of the experiment to determine their mood. Those that are in cheerful moods will be considered to have a sincere motivation to smile, while those in sour moods will be considered to have insincere motivations to smile.

Each test subject will be given two counters. One counter will be for tracking the number of people who smile at them when they smile, and the other will track the number of people who either ignore or do not smile back. During the first run the person will target only females. The second run of the experiment will target only males.

Data Collection

The data collected in this experiment will be segregated by gender. The number of people who do and do not smile back will be recorded in a tally sheet for each test subject.

Data Analysis

The analysis of this data will involve finding average smile back rates for all participants, and for: male to male interactions, for male to female interactions, for sincere male to male interactions, for insincere male to male interactions, for sincere female to male interactions and for insincere female to female interactions.

The student will then compare the various results to the control group. The student will be looking for differences to see if smiling is contagious, or if people have a natural tendency to smile in a public setting.

Conclusion

In order to draw conclusions from the data that is being collected, students will need to prove that there is a statistically significant difference between the control results and the test results. They will also have to rule out sex factors that may influence how likely a person is to smile back.