By Adrian Furnham
A smile, no matter whether natural or faked, can tell us a great deal about the person wearing it.
As Hamlet observes, “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” Nevertheless, smiling is an integral, and expected, part of everyday social intercourse in Western society. Here, Adrian Furnham of BI Norwegian Business School considers the ins and outs of smiling, both real and affected, in work and social contexts.
Have a look at the annual report or advertising bumf of big companies. Look at the photograph of the “top people”. Are they smiling? Are they advised to smile, or not, by their PR advisers? And what about appearing on television and being interviewed? Does smiling indicate confidence or smugness? Does it signal you are relaxed and friendly, or overconfident and arrogant?
People don’t seem to be smiling in many painted portraits. Maybe that had something to do with the dentistry of previous times? Yet, as we know, there are many different types of smile. But before that, consider the importance of smiling at work.
Emotional Labour
The concept of “emotional labour” (EL) supposedly originated over 40 years ago in a study by Hochschild (1983) in a book called The Managed Heart and subtitled Commercialization of Human Feeling. EL is different from physical and cognitive (intellectual) labour, in that it concerns very specifically the display of emotions in public. It is about the management and regulation of emotions, usually in public settings, for a specific purpose.
Smiling is often part of the acting game.
The early work distinguished between surface acting, which occurs when employees display the emotions required for a job without changing how they actually feel, and deep acting, an effortful process where workers change their internal feelings to align with organizational expectations, producing more natural and genuine emotional displays.
The objective of both is typically to show positive and suppress negative emotions, which are presumed to influence the satisfaction of customers and bottom-line outcomes, e.g., sales, recommendations, and repeat business. Questionnaires that assess this concept prompt for responses such as: “I put on an act in order to deal with people at work in an appropriate way”; “I just pretend to have the emotions I need to display for my job”; “I make an effort to actually feel the emotions that I need to display toward others”; “The emotions I express to people at work are genuine”. As we shall see, smiling is often part of the acting game.
Front and Back Stage
Many of the EL concepts are related to the early work of Goffman (1959), who used dramatic imagery to differentiate between Front Stage behaviour, which is a public performance where people present themselves according to social norms and expectations, and Back Stage behaviour, which occurs in private settings where individuals relax, drop their public persona, and express authentic emotions without any concerns about rejection. It is about impression management: Front Stage behaviour is emotional labour and requires controlled, strategic actions to maintain a desired image, while Back Stage allows for spontaneous, genuine behavior. The back stage is also where people can prepare for front stage performances. This could be interpreted as rehearsing their lines and appearance. Goffman argued that people work to keep these regions separate. Further, any collapse of front and back stage can lead to embarrassment, confusion, and disappointment. Smiling is very much a Front Stage behaviour.
Service Industry
One way to control and aid the expression of emotions is through the use of scripts. Service staff are encouraged to act, to learn their lines, to portray a character. This teaches them the appropriate emotion, which may, in time, become how they feel. Smiling is an important feature of this.
There is nothing new in scripts. Sociologists in fact argue they are a good thing because they can both help workers distance themselves from their “performance” and also reduce the likelihood of a “cock-up” or mishap. Young staff also seem to like scripts. They help interactions with difficult and demanding customers and to control volatile exchanges. As they become more confident, quite often staff personalise the (suggested) script with their own idiosyncrasies. Staff often say that scripts help and protect them. Further, everybody knows that it is just surface acting.
Serving staff have to “fake” being eternally polite, cheerful, and courteous. They have to cope with people being rude, dismissive, or over-familiar. Smiling can de-escalate a problem, but also make it worse. As we shall see, it depends.
All service staff have a “backstage” in the galley, the kitchen, even the cloakrooms. Here they can be themselves, let off steam, react how they would naturally. Behind the scenes, they can mock difficult customers. They can get their own back and enjoy the camaraderie of the oppressed. Rest breaks are times to become the real self, to take off the make-up, to recover a sense of self-worth. And to stop the fake smiles.
Acting is as much nonverbal as verbal. The office, certainly the shop, the restaurant, the hotel, are stages that require a certain amount of acting. It is almost always the portrayal of positive emotions encapsulated in the smile.
The Science of Smiling
Smiling may be natural or faked. The broad, genuine, expressive, spontaneous smile can be defined physiologically in terms of what muscles do to different parts of the face lips, cheeks, or eyes. There is also the wry, miserable smile, often lopsided, that indicates recognition of the vicissitudes of fate. The polite smile, often more like a grimace, is as much a sign of embarrassment as happiness.
The smiling or laughing face is often not very different from the howling or tearful face. Some people, women more than men, cry with joy. People sometimes laugh as a response to shock, or when embarrassed. Funeral wakes are often characterised by laughter. Genuine laughter increases breathing, while lowering blood pressure and heart rate. Crying, as uniquely human as laughing, may accompany laughter and may be as much a sign of joy and relief as of shock or sadness.
The “science of smiling” was founded by Charles Darwin. He noticed that smiling is universal, whereas many other nonverbal or body language behaviours (like gestures or touch) differ between cultures and are therefore probably learnt. Babies born blind smile like sighted infants. We begin smiling at five weeks; babies learn that crying gets the attention of adults, but smiling keeps it.
Darwin also observed that smiling and laughter often occurred together and therefore had similar origins. Happiness, he thought, was similar to amusement. Smiling, it is argued, is the outward manifestation of happiness and serves to begin to connect us to others. We are, as we say now, “prewired” to connect with others via this system. Interestingly, it has been shown that people who cannot smile, because of facial paralysis, have more difficulty in social relationships
There may, however, be culture differences in rules of smiling – when etiquette dictates it is appropriate to smile or not. For instance, it has been demonstrated that, in America, people smile more in the south than the north (cut by the Mason-Dixon Line)
We know that, on average, women smile more than men. We can observe that, at two months old, baby girls smile more than baby boys. We know that less-powerful men smile more than more-powerful men; also that smiling is linked to testosterone: the more men have, the smaller and fewer smiles they make.
Darwin noticed that smiling is universal, whereas many other nonverbal or body language behaviours differ between cultures.
It has been suggested that the English smile less than many other groups because of their ideas about the virtues of the “stiff upper lip” and not appearing emotional. Further, they tend to keep their teeth hidden and pull their mouth sideways rather than up. One explanation for the common pursed smile of the English is that, for a long time, a small mouth was considered more attractive and desirable.
Smiling is what psychologists call “the expression of positive affect”. The sequence of events goes like this
Most external events (seeing a person, hearing a joke) and internal events (like a memory) arouse, through brain activation, an emotion.
This affects the facial nerves that produce emotional expressions, but also other physical systems such as heart rate and
skin conductance.
The actual expression is modified by other nerves that are activated by thought (cognitive) processes by means of which the brain mediates social cognition, interpersonal exchanges, affective / cognitive group interactions.
There is feedback from the face to the brain.
So smiling is not only a manifestation of happiness, but increases happiness. In fact, impressive physical evidence has demonstrated not only that smiling is a consequence of feeling happy or being well contented, but also that putting on a smile can induce physiological changes.
Reciprocity and Contagion
There is a lot of evidence for body language mirroring. We automatically copy the facial expressions of others. We reciprocate, and in social groups it can be contagious. People respond to, and evaluate, those who smile differently from and more positively than those who do not. “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone.”
This sets up a virtuous cycle for the smiler and a vicious cycle for the non-smiler. Thus, in sales, hospitality, and negotiation situations, the person who smiles first increases the possibility of the other person(s) smiling, which increases trust and liking and therefore co-operation and helpfulness. Smiling helps bond people together.
There is also physiological evidence that smiling has specific biological consequences. This is even truer of laughter and is evidence of a feedback loop. Smiling has hormonal and physiological consequences that make us feel better and want to smile more. Smiling self-medicates and heals.
Decoding Smiles
Fake smiles are used for various purposes, often to pretend to show enjoyment, sociability, or agreement. These are easily noticeable because they involve the mouth and not the eyes. Technically, we can define the physiological difference between a genuine and fake smile: two muscles are involved (zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi); real smiles involve both muscles, and fake smiles involve the former but not the latter.
There are lots of reasons why people smile. We know that when people are lying they tend to smile less than when telling the truth. Police studies have shown many times that people accused of serious crimes (such as assault) and less serious crimes (such as shoplifting) tend to smile more, and more genuinely, when innocent than those later proved to be guilty. You can detect false, counterfeit smiles by looking for four things:
- Duration: How long it lasts. False smiles last longer.
- Assembly: They are put together (eyes, mouth) and taken apart more quickly than real smiles.
- Location: False smiles are “voluntary” and involve mainly the lower part of the face, whereas real “involuntary” smiles involve the upper part of the face around the eyes and eyebrows, as well.
- Symmetry: If the smile appears more on one side of the face (often the right side), it is more likely to be false.
Body language researchers have attempted to come up with a full categorisation scheme for the different types of smiling. Zoologists noticed that chimpanzees have two smiles: a submission face (lips retracted, teeth exposed) and a play face (lower jaw dropped and corners of the mouth pulled back). The submission face is designed to appease.
Smiling in humans can indicate dominance. If you watch two people of different social rank, the dominant people smile more in “friendly situations”, but less in “unfriendly situations”.
Another distinction has been between open- and closed-mouth smiles. One writer (Judi James) has identified 14 different smiles which she calls mirthless: the stretched social restrictions, asymmetric, upturned, mouth-shrug, perfect, suppressed, tonsil-flasher, secret, uber-flirt, aggressive, lower-jaw jut, clencher, smug, and know-all.
The world’s expert, however, is Paul Ekman, who has studied all facial muscles and psychological motives to understand the nature of smiles. He has a useful list:
- The felt smile, which is long and intense and shows all the signs of positive feeling associated with amusement, contentment, pleasure from stimulation.
- The fear smile and contempt smiles are misnomers because neither has to do with positive emotions, though both can have a “smiley mouth” and dimples.
- The dampened smile is a real smile where people attempt to suppress or conceal the extent of their positive emotions.
- The miserable smile is a “grin and bear it” smile indicating stoicism about negative emotions.
- The flirtatious smile is partly embarrassed because the person gazes / faces away from the person of interest / contact.
- The Chaplin smile is a contorted supercilious smile that in effect smiles at smiling.
Ekman also notes deliberate, but not fake, smiles that send particular messages such as:
- The Qualifier smile, which takes the edge off a harsh message and can “trap” the recipient into returning the smile.
- The Compliance smile is an acknowledgement that a bitter pill will be swallowed without protest.
- The Co-ordinated smile is a polite, co-operative smile showing agreement, understanding, and acknowledgement.
- The Listener Response smile, which simply indicates that everything heard is understood. It is an encouragement to continue.
Politicians, movie stars, and media people practise their smiles. So do those in the hospitality business. There are things they learn not to do: open your mouth, unless laughing; produce a sudden flash smile; have a choreographed smile that bears no relation to what you are saying. Saying “cheese” produces fake smiles. People well known for smiling very little (Putin, Bronson, Thatcher) have a reputation for being tough and non-submissive, which is what they want to portray. Smiling affects a person’s reputation and those in the “reputation business” know that.
So
Is the psychology of smiling essentially little more than amusing trivia? Or does learning both the performance art and the skill of decoding smiles give one a real advantage in all aspects of life? The ubiquity of the new media means we have to learn performance skills. A good start is learning how and when to smile and how to decode others.
About the Author
Adrian Furnham is at BI Norwegian Business School. He was taught, as a Boy Scout, to “smile and whistle against all difficulties”, except under water.
