A smile might brighten your mood, but new research suggests that forcing yourself to smile over and over can have the opposite effect. When smiling becomes an obligation, especially one tied to financial pressure, it may actually leave people feeling less happy and more irritated.
For years, psychologist Nicholas Coles, Ph.D., studied evidence suggesting that even an artificial smile could make someone feel a little happier. Yet those findings never quite matched his own experiences.
"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," laughed Coles, a professor of psychology at the University of Florida. "So I'm looking at all this evidence I had accrued so far that smiling boosts happiness and realizing it flies in the face of my own experiences in the world."
That contradiction inspired Coles and his colleagues to investigate what happens when people must keep smiling, rather than simply trying it once. Their findings suggest an important distinction: A brief, intentional smile can provide a small emotional lift, but repeatedly putting on a smile under pressure can undermine happiness.
Source: ScienceDaily - Psychology — Read the full article on the original site ↗