Forcing a smile repeatedly under financial pressure can make people feel less happy, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
The study challenges years of lab evidence suggesting that fake smiles boost moods. Psychologist Nicholas Coles, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Florida, spent years looking at data backing that idea. Yet those findings conflicted with his own past work in customer service.
“I used to work in customer service. I actually got written up for my inability to keep smiling at work at an unnamed theme park in Florida,” Coles told ScienceDaily.
To test how real-world demands affect expressions, Coles worked with researchers Annabel Dang and Joao Francisco Goes Braga Takayanagi. The online experiment initially enrolled 1,201 people, with data from 1,174 included in the final analysis. Participants viewed images meant to provoke emotional reactions, including pleasant flowers and kittens alongside disturbing scenes of theft and animal mistreatment.
Researchers told participants to form a smile or let expressions happen naturally. Half the participants faced warnings that failing to follow instructions could cost them $2 from a $6 payment, although no one actually lost money.
When viewing unpleasant images, a single smile gave participants a modest mood boost. But that positive effect weakened when repeated and vanished entirely when combined with financial penalties.
The reversal appeared sharper with pleasant images. While a single smile offered little benefit over natural reactions, forced or repeated smiles caused happiness ratings to fall below those of participants who reacted naturally, alongside strong irritation and anger.
“If you only force a smile once without any financial penalties, you can see the improvement in happiness,” Coles explained to ScienceDaily.
“But when you make it a little bit like the real world, where you have to keep repeating it, and if you don’t do it well, you get financial penalties, you see it completely reverse,” he added.
The findings shed light on why constant workplace cheerfulness can frustrate employees. Coles pointed to criticism faced by Target over a policy requiring workers to smile when customers came within a specific distance.
Coles suggests these mandates limit emotional freedom. He now questions societal pressures surrounding happiness.
“As a society, we have placed such an immense amount of emphasis on trying to make ourselves feel happier than we are,” Coles said, “much less emphasis on just being content with what we have.”
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