[2] Strack is a member of Germany's National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for psychology in 2019.

[3] He was the lead author of a frequently cited[4][failed verification] 1988 study that provided support for the facial feedback hypothesis.

Strack's study asked participants to hold a pen in their mouths in such a way as to make them either smile or frown, and then had them rate how funny a series of the Far Side cartoons were.

[6][7] Strack himself suggested[8] that the negative results of the replication study may have been caused by its researchers' use of a video camera to record the participants' responses.

[9] Subsequent research has supported Strack's claim that participants knowing they are being recorded by cameras led to the replication study's negative result.