Travel advice to tourists visiting the U.S.
points out one custom most Americans wouldn't
think twice about: their smile.
Guidebooks explain to tourists that Americans smile
to strangers a lot.
So, why do Americans smile so much,
and why is that so strange to everyone else?
Americans seem to smile even when there' s
not a very good reason to.
When you see an American smiling,
they might be feeling happy,
confident, or neutral.
Sometimes, just a polite way to make someone else
feel comfortable. Think "service with a smile."
Here's your receipt. Thank you very much!
In other countries, though, smiling for no
reason can make you seem kind of dumb.
One researcher found in countries like Japan, India,
South Korea, and Russia, smiling faces
were considered less intelligent than serious ones.
His theory is that there's a connection
between a country's level of instability
and finding smiling stupid.
After all, how can you be
so confident and happy when the future's uncertain?
That might help explain stereotypically
frowny places like Russia, where smiling in photos
isn't really a thing.
There's also some interesting research that
helps explain the other end of the spectrum:
why Americans have stereotypically mega-watt smiles.
It turns out that countries with a long, robust
history of immigration have historically relied
more on nonverbal communication.
Therefore, people there might smile more.
In a recent study, researchers looked at
the number of "source countries" that have
fed into a country since Columbus
arrived in the Americas.
Places like Canada and the United States
are very diverse, with more than
60 source countries. But places like China
and Zimbabwe are more homogenous,
with just a few nationalities
represented in their populations.
The authors found that emotional
expressiveness was correlated with diversity.
In other words, when there are a lot of immigrants
around, you might have to smile more to build
trust and cooperation, since you don't all
all speak the same language.
But in countries that are less-diverse,
people were more likely to smile to show
they were superior to one another.
In these countries, smiling is a way to preserve the hierarchy.
But American's just don't smile more often,
they also smile much more enthusiastically.
For a study published last year,
researchers compared the official photos of
American and Chinese business
and government leaders.
After coding them according to their levels
of "facial muscle movement", they found
that American leaders in all contexts were both
more likely to smile and showed more
excited smiles than the Chinese leaders did.
Later, they found the more a country's college students
valued happy, high-energy emotions,
the more excited the government officials from those countries
looked in their photos.
Cultural differences in smiling don't just
confuse foreign tourists visiting the United States.
They also come as a surprise for American companies doing business abroad.
When McDonalds went to Russia in the 90s,
they had to coach their employees on how to smile.
But when Wal-Mart opened stores in Germany,
it had to tell its sales clerks to stop smiling
at customers...because some people saw it as flirting.
In other words, the American smile is a product
of its culture. And like any other product,
we try to export it around the world.
This is "You Are Here", a new series about the science
behind everyday life. Let us know what topics you
want us to explore in the comments.
I'm Olga Khazan, thank you for watching.