Fake Smiles Can Apparently Make You Depressed

BBC's "Spot the Fake Smile" test. From Greg Hughes.

Do you often try to smile, even when you're not happy? According to this story from The New York Times, you may actually be worsening your mood. This information comes from a study in the Academy of Management Journal, wherein researchers examined a group of bus drivers for two weeks. Why bus drivers? Because they often smile whenever a passenger gets on their bus, which theoretically gave researchers a large data set.

The study found a difference between "surface acting," or fake smiling, and "deep acting," which is a technique of using positive thoughts or memories to bring out real smiles (similar to method acting, I guess). The researchers had the bus drivers alternate between surface acting and deep acting on different days. On days when the drivers surface acted, they tended to become depressed and withdrawn from work. On days when they deep acted, their moods became more positive and their productivity increased.

These differences in technique affected women more than they did men. Dr. Brent Scott, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and co-author of the study, suspects that cultural norms are to blame. He says that women are socialized to be more emotionally expressive, so hiding their emotions may strain them more.

So the lesson here might be to avoid smiling when you're not feeling it. Instead, try to recall enough positive feelings that your smile comes naturally.

By the way, want to know which of your friends are genuinely happy and which ones are secretly wallowing in an existential morass of boredom and contempt, hidden only by a plastered-on contraction of facial muscles and teeth that they think will dull the pain, but in fact only pulls them deeper down the gaping hole of self-pity that they call life? Then head over to BBC's Spot the Fake Smile test! It only takes a minute or two, and you may not be as good as you think. I scored 16 out of 20! See if you can beat that!

The Vast Majority of British Couples Are Happy

Here's what every British wedding should
look like. From the BBC.

Continuing this week's Valentine's theme, this story from United Press International says that almost all British couples are happy, but married couples are even happier. In fact, around 90% of married women and around 93% of married men are happy in their relationship, compared to around 88% cohabiting women and 92% cohabiting men.

This information comes from Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. Researchers surveyed couples (both members individually) on a 1-to-7 happiness scale, with 1 meaning extremely unhappy and 7 meaning perfect. The survey also found that the happiest couples have been together less than five years, have no children, have an employed man, and both members hold a college degree.

It would be interesting to view similar data--possibly including gay couples--for other countries to see if Britain is unique in this regard. I found this article, which I can't view fully, but which seems to suggest that other countries have similar marriage happiness correlations, especially developed nations. That's good news if you're not British!

New British Charity Aims to Spread Happiness

Mark Williamson, director of the
charity. From The Young Foundation.

Hot on the heels of yesterday's story comes this one from the BBC. A charity called Action for Happiness will be spreading happiness tips to anyone within ear- or Internet-shot. They have a PDF workbook called the Happiness Challenge that you can download here. You can also watch the former Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe give an introductory mindfulness lesson in the news story itself.

From their website, Action for Happiness already looks quite well-connected through Facebook and Twitter. We'll keep an eye on them to see what effect they have, but for now there's not much more to report. Britain and a lot of other countries could certainly use the help, though!