Smile! (And We Will Know Your Nationality)

So, I have lots of motivation from this runner's high I have going on, and I just read this really interesting article about smiles.  You can also read it here.  What really interested me was the part at the beginning where there is a story about a woman who is talking to a Russian reporter who tells her Americans all have fake smiles.  (And French smiles are all real.)  Now she is doing research on smiles.  It's a facinating article, and I encourage you to read it.

I thought I should include a picture of several nationalities smiling so you can try to find the differences in the smiles.  I think we all just look happy, and I apologize for not smiling.  There is one American and one Brit- can you tell the difference from the smiles?

Teaching the non-Americans about Halloween

But back to Americans having fake smiles.  I think that Americans are capable of having real smiles, and if they aren't, I don't know what a smile is.  Part of being able to tell if a smile is real or fake is based on our ability to mirror the smile being made.  I think I have mirrored real smiles of other Americans.  But, I guess I am American, so maybe I have no idea what a real smile is.  If that is true, it makes me sad.

I know there are lots of conceptions about people from the US and I wonder if this is something that people really think is true.  (And if it is actually true.)  I did a quick Google search (and now have lowered my critical thinking skills a little more) and found some interesting results.

First, was from an annoyed American who had lived abroad, and when he went back to the States to visit, he/she had issues with Americans always smiling at him.  You can read about his/her annoyance in his great Yahoo Answers question.  He/she says that everyone smiles as they pass you, and he therefore questions the genuineness of the smiles.  Then he/she quotes Baudrillard: "Like the Cheshire cat, the smile continues long after the emotion has died."  There are some interesting answers for him/her.  It makes me wonder what other Americans that have gone abroad think about this, and what other nationalities think about this when they are in the States.

Then I came across an interesting article about the differences between the way people from the US and the way Britons smile.  This article gives an overview of the study and talks about the different ways the NYT (from the US) and the Sunday Times (from the UK) present the findings.  (Links to the NYT and Sunday Times articles are provided in the article.)  The two smiles are distinct and use different muscles in the face.  (And yes, Clarie, I went back and looked at pictures of you to see if your smile fit the British profile.  It's too late for me to make a decision on that.)

I also came across a several blogs that only briefly mentioned Americans and their smiles.  Mostly, the consensus was that Americans smile too much, and therefore, the smiles are fake.   If someone greets you with a smile on their face, tells you to come back soon with a smile, and invites you over to have tea with a smile, they are clearly faking their smile.  (And it apparently really pisses some people off.)

Finally, I found a cool website where you can test your own ability at spotting fake smiles!  It doesn't take too long, and it was interesting to see how many I got right (17 out of 20, in case you were wondering).  You can take the BBC test here.

Peace and Love from Santiago

PS-I started packing, and it's kind of sad.  I have less than a week of looking over my living room balcony to a beautiful sunset behind Cerro San Cristobal while listening to the sounds of happy summer time coming from the park.  Less than a week!