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In Japan, dimples (えくぼ ekubo) are commonly thought to be a sign of good luck and a fortunate life path that attracts positive outcomes. A person with dimples is believed to carry happiness in their smile.
The little hollows where laughter has lingered, shaped not by fate, but by kindness. They are believed to form where smiles return often, softening the face as water smooths stone.
There’s a widespread belief that dimples make a person more endearing, warm and friendly. This is because their warm heart has generated more joyful laughter than usual, which has worn the face into softness over time.
Dimples are never linked to misfortune. An old rural folk belief holds that dimples are traces of a child being touched or kissed by deities or spirits before birth. This marks them as someone protected or blessed.
There's little doubt than genuine smiles tend to be contagious, and dimples intensify the smile. Seeing a smile activates mirror neurons, whereby the observer’s brain partially mirrors the emotion.
Dimples can be considered favourable not because of superstition, but because of how the human brain instinctively responds to faces. The reward centres of an observer's brain respond more strongly to authentic smiles than to posed ones. Dimples deepen only when someone smiles sincerely, so they become associated with emotional authenticity.
Dimples resemble features common in infants: rounded cheeks, soft facial contours, and shallow facial indentations. According to baby-schema theory, such features activate care-taking instincts, reduce perceived threat, and increase feelings of affection and protection. This is why dimples are often described as cute, even in adults.
An infant's dimples tend to disappear in adulthood, except in those with a bifid zygomaticus major muscle. This is an anatomical variation in which the main smiling muscle splits into two bundles (superior and inferior) as it approaches the mouth, often creating cheek dimples due to the inferior bundle's attachment to the skin. It is relatively unusual and therefore an adult with dimples is more easily remembered. And memorability can increase perceived attractiveness.
Unless you pay thousands of dollars for dimpleplasty (sutures placed inside the mouth to create a tether between muscle and skin that causes a dimple when you smile), dimples are simply an anatomical variation that can subconsciously alter an observer's perception — not a predictor of fate.