Smiling may not always make you happier, and new research suggests that forcing yourself to smile repeatedly could actually make you feel worse. In a University of Florida study involving more than 1,100 participants, researchers discovered that while a single artificial smile can provide a small mood boost, repeatedly faking smiles can erase that benefit or even reverse it.
I suspect any customer service rep. could have told us that.
I just have one of those faces. People come up to me and say, ‘What’s wrong?’ Nothing. ‘Well, it takes more energy to frown than it does to smile.’ Yeah, you know it takes more energy to point that out than it does to leave me alone?
Bill Hicks
Embrace instead the amazing, healthy and therapeutic effects of screaming at others to fuck off.
https://laurentian.scholaris.ca/items/1fe04823-d12c-420d-8b72-c1b582fdf91e
I don’t need your cheap tricks. I can be miserable all on my own.
Did we not learn this from Inside Out?
My mother was telling me to smile since elementary “to release good brain chemicals”. Reading this the thought crossed my mind that growing up was one big customer service job to keep my parents happy.
I thought everyone realized this. Its funny how I have always hated a forced smile so i don’t do it. For that I get told I’m not a good person.
File this under No Shit, Sherlock.
Faking positive emotions really needs to be driven out of cultural expectation.
But USians were arguing with me just some days ago that forced smiles make them cheery.
I wouldn’t consider this common sense at all. Growing up, I was always taught that faking a smile can produce dopamine and legitimately make you happier.
It’s good that things like this actually get researched.
This. ⬆️
No Shit, Sherlock. I’m surprised it needed a study.
It’s really important to study the obvious things. Most provide evidence of things we knew so we can be confident, and some prove common sense wrong and improve our understanding of the world.
Masking always makes me feel worse, so there’s that.
It sucks when the paint comes off with it.
And yet sitting in my car practicing sinister maniacal Joker laughs is some of the best fun I ever have.
I thought this was common knowledge by now. I know that similar studies have shown the same effect years ago, and having worked in costumer support by phone (where every communications trainer tells you to put up a smile when talking to clients), it was obvious that this is not a healthy thing to do all day. The smiling loses all it’s meaning, it just becomes a grimace after a while.
Yea, hate supporting mummers, too.
That’s why you have to think of something funny when you do it
But it takes seventeen million more muscles to frown than it does to smile! So you should be lazy and smile!
