“Why Smiling Too Much May Be Bad for You”

“The researchers found that smiling frequently may actually make people feel worse if they’re sort of faking it — grinning even though they feel down. When people force themselves to smile because they hope to feel better or they do it just to hide their negative emotions, this strategy may backfire.”

(a) this might be part of why women are more likely than men to experience depression — we are constantly being told to smile and that might generally dilute the positive effect of supposedly positive behaviors.
(I sometimes scare myself by how easily I am able to paste a smile on my face in order to be polite and unnoticed)
(b) I wonder if smiling is a sort of degraded activity now in our society; every once in a while I come across an article that describes how American society expects people to smile more than other countries do and I wonder where that comes from and what it does.

FAQ