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Why Some Cultures Frown on Smiling

Finally, an explanation for Bitchy Resting Face Nation

Children jubilantly celebrate at a ceremony in Kazminskoye, Russia, in 2015

Eduard Korniyenko / Reuters

OLGA KHAZAN

MAY 27, 2016

SCIENCE

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Heres something that has always puzzled me, growing up in the U.S. as a child of Russian parents. Whenever I or
my friends were having our photos taken, we were told to say cheese and smile. But if my parents also happened
to be in the photo, they were stone-faced. So were my Russian relatives, in their vacation photos. My parents highschool graduation pictures show them frolicking about in bellbottoms with their young classmates, looking
absolutely crestfallen.
Its not just photos: Russian women do not have to worry about being instructed by random men to smile. It is
Bitchy Resting Face Nation, seemingly forever responding um, I guess? to any question the universe might pose.
This does not mean we are all unhappy! Quite the opposite: The virile ruler, the vodka, the endless mounds of sour
creamthey are pleasing to some. Its just that grinning without cause is not a skill Russians possess or feel
compelled to cultivate. Theres even a Russian proverb that translates, roughly, to laughing for no reason is a sign of
stupidity.
Russians fondness for the gentle scowl seems even more unusual to expats than its actual, climatic cold. And the
cultural dierence cuts both ways: Newcomers to America often remark on the novelty of being smiled at by
strangers.
So why is this? Why do some societies not encourage casual smiling? I got my answer, or at least part of one, when I

stumbled across a new paper by Kuba Krys, a psychologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In some countries,
smiling might not be a sign of warmth or even respect. Its evidence that youre a foola tricky fool.
Krys focused on a cultural phenomenon called uncertainty avoidance. Cultures that are low on this scale tend to
have social systemscourts, health-care systems, safety nets, and so forththat are unstable. Therefore, people
there view the future as unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Smiling is a sign of certainty and condence, so when people in those countries smile, they might seem odd. Why
would you smile when fate is an invisible wolf waiting to shred you? You might, in those low-UA countries, even
be considered stupid for smiling.
Krys also hypothesized that smiling in corrupt countries would be, um, frowned upon. When everyones trying to
pull one over on each other, you dont know if someones smiling with good intentions, or because theyre trying to
trick you.

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

To test this theory, Krys had thousands of people in 44 dierent countries judge a series of eight smiling and nonsmiling faces on a scale of honesty and intelligence. He compared their answers to the countrys rankings of
uncertainty avoidance from a 2004 study of 62 societies and ratings of corruption.

He found that in countries like Germany, Switzerland, China, and Malaysia, smiling faces were rated as
signicantly more intelligent than non-smiling people. But in Japan, India, Iran, South Korea, andyou guessed it
Russia, the smiling faces were considered signicantly less intelligent. Even after controlling for other factors,
like the economy, there was a strong correlation between how unpredictable a society was and the likelihood they
would consider smiling unintelligent.

Intelligence and Smiling

Countries to the left of the red line consider smiling people to be signicantly less intelligent than nonsmiling individuals; those to the right are the opposite. (Journal of Nonverbal Behavior)

In countries such as India, Argentina, and the Maldives, meanwhile, smiling was associated with dishonesty
something Krys found to be correlated to their corruption rankings.

Honesty and Smiling

Countries to the left of the red line consider smiling faces to be less honest. (Journal of Nonverbal
Behavior)

This research indicates that corruption at the societal level may weaken the meaning of an evolutionary important

signal such as smiling, Krys writes.

Thats certainly a satisfying explanation. But its worth noting that other studies have found there might be other
factors, like how hierarchical or masculine a culture is, that play a greater role in emotional expressionwhich
smiling is certainly a part of. And theres evidence that some cultures dont value happiness very highly, which
would aect how often people there force themselves to break into a grin.
Finally, ranking countries in order of their uncertainty avoidance can be kind of fraught. (Not to mention timedependent: Consider how certain pre-2010 Syria or pre-2008 Greece might be.) Confusingly, theres an entire
other ranking system of uncertainty avoidance, designed by a dierent researcher named Geert Hofstede in the the
1980s, and the two rankings have completely dierent results. You know what they say about trying to understand
Russia with the mind alone, and apparently questionnaires arent a whole lot better.
Krys work could use expansion and replication, to be sure. But it might at least be comforting for any chipper
Americans who nd themselves scratching their heads in that sanctuary of seriousness, the St. Petersburg metro.


Olga Khazan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OLGA KHAZAN is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers health.
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