The Problem With Faking a Smile

As a general rule of thumb, if you see someone smiling, they’re usually happy. Sure, there are a lot of clear exceptions — if you’re posing for a photo or robbing Gotham City, there’s a good chance the smile is more for show than an expression of your current emotional state. But in either case, the smiling isn’t harmful to your health. That’s impossible, right?

Unfortunately, not quite.

If you are going out to dinner tonight, here’s a prediction: the waiter will greet you with a smile on their face — or, at least, they won’t have a bad attitude. While you’re at the restaurant, ostensibly, for the food, there’s more to the overall dining experience. You want the person taking your order and bringing you your food to create a warm, welcoming environment. And it’s not just those in the restaurant business. As the Association for Psychological Science notes, “In addition to regulating their facial expressions, cashiers, call center employees, receptionists, bus drivers, and even those professionals who aren’t always seen as fulfilling customer service roles, such as nurses and teachers, are often expected to project a welcoming attitude and maintain a positive, or at least even-tempered, tone while interacting with the most difficult members of the public.” They have to appear to be happy. But let’s face it, most of the time, they’re faking it.

And that turns out to be a problem. In 2019, researchers from Penn State and the University at Buffalo teamed up on a study, available here, that surveyed more than 1,500 U.S. employees. As USA Today reported, “the data analyzed included information on how often employees performed ‘surface acting,’ or faking or suppressing their emotions, as well as their drinking habits after work.” The results weren’t great for those who had to put on a happy face at work, even if they were hardly feeling happy inside. Per the Guardian, “the study found that when workers there regularly faked or amplified positive emotions such as smiling while at the same time suppressing negative emotions like rolling one’s eyes, those employees tended to be heavier drinkers after work.”

The researchers believe that the problem for the faux-happy workers goes beyond repressed emotions. Alicia Grandey, one of the researchers, told Penn State’s news site that “faking and suppressing emotions with customers was related to drinking beyond the stress of the job or feeling negatively. It wasn’t just feeling badly that makes them reach for a drink. Instead, the more they have to control negative emotions at work, the less they are able to control their alcohol intake after work.” Basically, the workers were using up their willpower to prevent a scowl from popping on their faces; when the time came to resist a second or third drink after hours, they weren’t able to do so.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the expectation of “service with a smile” will go away any time soon. So it may be a good idea to do your part — treat the people helping you with kindness and empathy, and maybe you’ll help them save a bit on the bar bill later that night.

Bonus fact: Frowning can make you happy… well, maybe. And only if you like Jell-O and have a Twitter account and a time machine. In 2011, Kraft, the company that makes Jell-O pudding, monitored Twitter, counting smiley-face emojis and frowny face ones and displaying the results on a billboard in Manhattan. When the 🙁s outpaced 🙂s, Jell-O’s emoji monitor “[gave] coupons at random” to those who frowned, according to Trend Hunter.

From the Archives: Putting a Happy Face on Trash: Sewage solutions, with a smile.