On a global level, dental tourism is an industry that produces billions of dollars each year. Costa Rica is often cited as a leading destination for dental tourism thanks to the affordability of treatments and quality of care. Marketing is one of the major aspects driving the international dental tourism industry, and one particular marketing element in this regard is the power of the human smile.

The New Smile Dental Group of Costa Rica is an odontology practice that specializes on dental tourism. Marketing is a strong factor in this dental clinic’s business process, and a radiant smile is often one of their focal points in their marketing efforts. The essence of using a smile to market dental procedures is very psychological; there is a primary strategy of appealing to pride and self-esteem through the aesthetic of perfect, gleaming teeth, but underneath the human attraction to pretty smiles lies a whole body of scientific research.

The esteemed English natural scientist Charles Darwin took on the topic of smiling in 1872, when he published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin suggested that a physiological change such as an emotion was more than just a consequence; he believed that a smile could shape emotions individually and collectively. Philosopher William James later expanded on Darwin’s research and started the formulation of facial feedback hypothesis.

The smile that dental practitioners such as the New Smile Dental Group try to sell you on in Costa Rica is the toothy grin that flashes a full set of healthy teeth. We think of this smile as being genuine, and this is precisely what French anatomist Guillame Duchenne determined a decade before Darwin. The Duchenne smile is one of the most joyful emotions we can experience: it starts with stimulation of our senses, which transmit complex signals to our brains, which in turn send electrochemical signals to the orbicularis oculi and zygomatic major muscles that produce our smile.

In the 20^th century, significant research by behavioral scientists suggested that our propensity towards smiling can determine our future emotional well-being. For example, a 30-year study by researchers at the University of California Berkeley looked at the yearbook photos of smiling female university students. The research subjects whose photos displayed perfect examples of Duchenne smiles were later found to live in states of marital satisfaction decades later.

If we go back to the early research by Darwin and James, it stands to reason that if we feel self-conscious about our teeth, we will hold back on our Duchenne smiles; thus affecting our potential quality of emotional life. Perhaps it is for this reason that odontology clinics such as the New Smile Dental Group of Costa Rica focus so strongly on the benefits of smile restoration treatments.