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Comment by thatfrenchguy | Hacker News Reader

But really, why do Americans smile?

One of the other commenters said:

    [snip]The English used to feel pretty uncomfortable about yanks grinning away at everything[/snip]

That surprised me, since our cultural norms largely stemmed from there.

So what would account for the difference? It must've come about after we split as a country.

I wonder if it's our Declaration of Independence including "the pursuit of Happiness". See:

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Nowhere else in the world (up until then, anyway) gave as its founding commandment that being happy was an indicator of a life well-lived.

Thus, perhaps, while other places reserve the effort of smiling for the emotion of irrepressible joy, Americans -- to prove they're living a good life -- present a smile.

May be inherited from the cultures that intermingled in the Americas? Africans tend to smile a lot.

> That surprised me, since our cultural norms largely stemmed from [England].

I don't think that assumption really holds up, it's very pop-history. From the Scots of the Appalachians, the religious fanatics of New England, the garguntuan influence of African-American syncretic culture, the Nordic yeoman of the mid-north-east, the southern European urban influx of the 1900s and the new, exciting Latin American syncretism: America really is a cultural melting pot. Only, really, the Virginia gentry (Jefferson, Washington, et al) can be plainly said to have imported English norms - and still, they were ideological radicals interested in forming a new nation.

The French like to call us (English, Scots, and all the varieties of American) "Anglo-Saxons," but they're hardly right. Don't give them ammo, they're already merciless!

There's a paper floating around somewhere that finds a positive correlation between polite smiling and diversity. It posits that it's a way to help establish trust in societies where you're constantly interacting w/ people from groups outside your personal sphere. Indeed, I suspect Americans probably smile even more when abroad precisely because they're interacting w/ social strangers.

Because other Americans smile back, and it imbues a philadelphic feeling. That's valuable when your society is not an ethnostate, but a mix of immigrants.

To appear friendly and welcoming, and to show that you're having a good time.

People often assume something's wrong if you never smile, or, worse, frown.

I'll try to give you European POV :).

People sometimes have good time (better than avg), sometimes bad time, and sometime neutral time (say.. thinking about some problem to solve, or repeating Swedish vocabulary to learn a new language, or trying to recall the name of a person you just met and you're supposed to remember).

If you're compelled to smile with every interaction, in order to show that you have good time, then it'd mean that you'd be mostly lying according to the aforementioned definition :).

Unless we re-define the 'good time', so it means 'not significantly bad', which seems to be the case here. It's just, that it requires a bit of effort to remember and to switch to when visiting US.

The real reason is that American smile is relatively new phenomenon that appeared about 100 years ago with the emergence of Hollywood, everyone wanted to act like famous actors and it became a part of the culture. Also the smile in US is a sign of hope, dream, prosperity and individualism. In socialist countries the collective well-being is above the needs of individual so there is no reason to smile all the time.

Basically the article still applies. People who always have a smile on their face are praised as having reached a level of contentment and joy that the rest of us aspire to. That and you'll eventually get fired from your job if you never smile.

Speaking of jobs, at least in America, smiling is helpful even getting the job in the first place.

As it was explained to me by one American: it signals confidence.

There's also a fake it till you make it aspect. If you're having a crummy day, forcing yourself to smile anyway can help you out of it. Wagging the dog's tail to make it happy so to speak.

One historical explanation is that it was due to the popularization of sales culture in the 20th century which began around the 1920s, and greatly accelerated after WWII.

Another historical explanation, as has been mentioned by other commenters, is that it was due to the popularization of African American culture.

But of course, they are just two of the many plausible historical explanations.

Because our happiness often cannot be contained.

Well, weed being legal on the west coast helps. :)

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