Mona Lisa was special in part because it was uncommon for people to smile. In Middle Ages, someone smiling a lot would be perceived as stupid. That's why facial expressions in medieval imagery are so serious. Today, being surprised a lot is often taken as a sign of stupidity, whereas in ancient Greece an owl was the bird of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Because, obviously, an owl is always surprised, and surprise is the first step to understanding.
Smiling prominently for portraits seemed to become more popular only after modern dentistry became common.
I imagine most people in the Middle Ages (and much later) had chipped, missing, buckled, crooked and stained teeth.
Now pristine teeth are a signal of wealth (even though they're usually 100% fake veneers, at least among actors and models) so people want to signal their wealth by smiling prominently.
It was also an issue of the speed of capture. Paintings and old Cameras had long exposure times so you needed a pose that you could hold for a long time.
Teeth in skeletons from the Middle Ages seem fine. It is later ones, after bringing sugar back from the Americas, that have lots of cavities and missing teeth.
Both beets and sugar cane are old world plants, and maize-based corn syrup wasn't used as a sweetener until the 20th century. It's true that refined sugar is terrible for dental health, but it didn't come from the americas.
It wasn’t known that beets could be exploited for sugar until the 16th century. Sugar cane was not known in Europe (outside Muslim-ruled areas of Spain) until post-Colombian times. In antiquity, the sole common means of sweetening food in Europe was honey, and later dulce de leche.
Check out the thesis of the recent bestseller Breath by James Nestor. Native American and other traditional cultures put serious emphasis on nose breathing, strictly avoiding mouth breathing. Apparently, consistent nose-breathing can affect nasal and upper-palate development, favoring a spacious mouth and straighter teeth. It can also help avoid dry mouth at night, apparently favoring resistance to dental caries. There is a book by a 19th century ethnographer who discovered some of this, titled Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life.[1]
I was born with a deviated septum and for the first 15 years of my life I just assumed breathing through one’s mouth was normal and the nose was just for smelling things. After surgery I started breathing through my nose without conscious thought for the first time.
Same but my septum was deviated by a punch to the face when I was 12. I had the surgery when I was 28 and the pleasantness of my breath, jaw tension, sleep quality, and resting heart rate all improved significantly
Yes, certainly for heavy congestion. However, for marginal cases, there might be some body adaptation made to help with efforts at nose breathing. .. Nestor avoids giving specific recommendations, given individual variations and needs. But the research seems to point to: there is a lot going on. For example, apparently the nose contains erectile tissue, perhaps helping explain how one can cycle between now one nostril being easier to breathe through, later the other. .. My very limited experience, living where I would usually call myself "always congested," is that given a little effort/intent at nose breathing, I now sense that my congestion is consistently less than before. (But N<1 as evidence, since there could be some seasonal change as well.)
A couple of years ago I forced myself to sleep with my mouth shut. It helped undry me mouth. But, through my own pressure I started to be a heavy teeth grinder in the night. That’s definitely worse for me.
I listened to the podcast, which as it says focuses in particular on John Mew and son, John apparently being on the cruel and crank end by experimenting on his children including on his daughter with expected negative results, and his son now reportedly showing a flair for bringing pseudosciency selective evidence to promotion on social media, and more recently perhaps helping "incels" fix "weak chins." (AKA, perhaps a focus for unstated outrage to help motivate a slightly-weak podcast)
I was offered a tongue depressor by my childhood dentist to help fix a crooked tooth without orthodontia, so when Nestor's book mentioned one orthodontist suggesting that positioning one's tongue to touch the roof of the mouth would matter, I dismissed that part as probably the weakest in the book. That said, the science overall seems to be evolving, research in breathing and the nose apparently increasing, and Nestor is meticulous in maintaining references, including online. Many might be comfortable with some uncertainty and not dismissing this all as pseudoscience. I commend Nestor's reporting.
I also hope that, if industrial civilization eventually passes, and for now where severe poverty without dentistry exists, people will find again whatever practices better prevented dental caries.
Getting kind of off-topic here, but my recollection is that teeth in the pre-industrial age were often destroyed over time by grit from flour milling that would wear down teeth.
There was a Han Dynasty (200 BC - 200 AD) ritual involving feeding mush to 70-year-olds. (Why mush? Because at that age you've probably lost your teeth.)
However, I have the impression that this is basically as true today as it was then.
Well, it's complicated. Glaukopis could also be translated as "blue eyed", or "grey eyed", not just "owl eyed".
Being the goddess of wisdom and handicraft (among other things), perception was a crucial attribute. Having big eyes (like the owl) could be interpreted as having good visual perception.
But it's not just about the size. She's also described as having "bright eyes", or "flashing eyes", or "darting eyes". It's more about the acuity of perception, than about some emotional aspect.
I mean, life was objectively a lot worse in the Middle Ages. Give a person from that era a McMansion and tell them to expect clean water, a hamburger, and a soft modern bed every night, they’ll smile too.
Very common in post-Soviet countries. The US is often referred to as the "West" and so is Western Europe. This refers to both the freedom and a certain mentality ("mentalitet" in Russian). Never heard this framing in the US, though.
It was more common in the past. In 2002 the cold war had ended only 11 years prior. Now we are 30 years out.
Same as how back then you could say “in the war” and people knew you meant WWII, but nowaways youth may give you a confused look.
But yes at least in Canada we used to use the east/west framing, and in respect of russia. In 2002 they were the more prominent power compared to China. That situation has heavily reversed.
I know a professor who taught at a community college in Brooklyn. He had a section on 9/11 and would warn his students if they had a personal connection to the events that they may want to skip those classes. Some students who were native life long New Yorkers didn't even know what 9/11 was.
The only way I can fathom this being the case in Brooklyn is a combination of kids living under a rock and a total failure of the local public education system.
Yes. Once while touring a space museum in Switzerland I was reading the placards about the Russian and US space programs. Yuri Gagarin was consistently referred to as "the communist" which seemed perfectly normal to me as an American. Then I saw one that referred to John Glenn as "the capitalist" which was a novel concept to my brain. It wasn't until that moment that I realized just how ridiculous it was for us to refer to random Russians as communists, these were both seasoned military men who had nothing to do with either ideology other than the fact that their governments were pushing these things.
Also, the "winning side" is allowed the freedom to move forwards and forget the past quicker. As a Yankee we don't think much about the US civil war. The deeper a northerner goes into the south the more you are reminded that their side did not win the civil war, they remember that shit, and you better be careful what you say about it less you get run out of town.
[edit spelling; I had double checked myself but still fucked it up]
The USA was and is a warmongering socialist state. Capitalism certainly doesn't prescribe huge spendings and nationalisation.
Russia was and is a warmongering socialist state.
The redeeming factor, and likely what makes "the communist" sounds reasonable, is that the Soviets defined themselves communist
With regard to people of a third country seeing one astronaut as the capitalist and the other as the communist, that goes way back. Consider these lines from Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (shot in summer 1965). As a man and woman look up at the moon, the man says about the Man in the Moon:
"He's fed up. He was glad to see Leonov land. Someone to talk to after an eternity alone! But Leonov tried to stuff
his head full of Lenin. So when the American landed,
the guy fled to his camp. But the American right away
crammed a Coke down his throat, after making him say thank you first."
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.
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.
[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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I wonder if any Russians can weigh in if this still feels accurate. I'm familiar with Polish Culture, which is less fun, frivolous, and happy than American culture, but a smile is certainly not an attack, just reserved for genuine occasions. Service people are in no way expected to smile unless there is some honest reason to.
Anecdotally, the only unprovoked bad interaction I've had with a drunk guy was also in Riga. He'd come and take my beer out of my hand, and taunt me with it, refusing to give it back.
The latitude of Warsaw is 52.2° N, which is about the same latitude as northern Canada (Edmonton).
Moscow is 55.7, which is the same as southern Alaska.
Days are shorter, darker, and colder. It has an impact on your mood.
Plus, the average income for a Pole is $18,000/year, whereas for the average White American worker its $40,000/year. Cost of living is often lower in America than in Poland (excepting Seattle, NY etc.). So materially the average American is a lot better off.
Nationally the US is near the OECD middle, and ahead of both Britain and New Zealand on education. Poland certainly scores well, not "miles ahead" well.
About 1/3 of Americans are getting a four year degree these days. The university systems in the US are vastly superior to anything Poland has. A third tier university in the US is as good as a first tier university in Poland. Forget about the second or first tier universities, Poland has nothing like a University of Virginia, Michigan or UCLA (all second tier), much less the elite schools. Which is why Poland isn't producing very much in the way of innovation or economic output. Poland's economy hasn't net expanded since 2008 (even before the pandemic), if their education system was so great it would show up in their economy.
Poland is also not miles ahead on healthcare at the median. The median American has full healthcare coverage and has faster access to healthcare than most socialized medicine nations, including Canada (where you'll wait months or years for procedures that Americans can get in weeks). We're talking about the median here, which is: an American earning $40,000 to $60,000 per year, with health insurance and richer than the median in either Germany or Sweden. The median American also has routine access to the latest medical technology, which the median Polish person has zero access to.
Miles ahead? Nope.
And if we're comparing fairly on demographics, the median white American demolishes the median white Pole, dramatically and across the board. The median white American is among the wealthiest medians on the planet (three times richer than the median Swede or German) and has an extreme income only comparable to nations like Switzerland and Norway. The US has taken on a dramatic amount of third-world immigration over the past ~45 years, which has persistently pushed against its median scoring as poor third world immigrants flood into the US (which debases the median as it happens). It takes a long time to lift the education and income levels for tens of millions of people coming from the third world with absolutely nothing and having to learn a new culture and language. That said, pretty soon the median Hispanic person in the US will be richer than the median German or Swede as well, so progress is occurring rapidly.
>A third tier university in the US is as good as a first tier university in Poland.
Only according to international rankings which measure scientific output which has a ton of confounding factors like how well funded the university is, how well regarded is in the research community or how many guest researchers can it attract.
I wonder if people in the US who are involved in hiring, and hire from Eastern Europe use other metrics that allow for more direct, meritocratic comparison of individuals (Leetcode etc.)? If so, do they found that, for example first-tier Polish uni grads perform at the same level as third tier US ones?
I think that the bell curve works the same everywhere, and even most US schools (excepting the very top ones), don't have the opportunity to fill more than 20-30% of their student body with brilliant kids from abroad.
Why on earth would you exclude non-white Americans from your demographic comparisons? That's the very definition of cherry picking. Your argument about non-white Americans being all recent immigrants is just plain wrong. 13% of people living in the US are immigrants and 40% of Americans are Non-white or Hispanic. Many Black, Hispanic and Asian American families have been in the country for centuries. And of course Native Americans have been here for thousands of years.
Poland has more average years in education, a higher high-school graduation rate, higher PSIA scores. More Poles get tertiary degrees, 44%, a full 10% higher than the USA. 7/10 of those degrees are masters level. And by the way, no one needs to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for their degrees.
I have no idea where you got that talking point about no net economic expansion since 2008. Poland's inflation adjusted GDP is one of the fastest growing in Europe, all while its population is dropping due to low birthrates and net migration to the rest of Europe. Its life expectancy is one year lower than the USA, which is already one year lower than the OECD average, but at least you can't be bankrupted by your medical bills.
Rich Americans have it great. The best schools in the world, enormous houses, new cars, the best cutting edge medicine, and extremely high paying jobs that build products the whole world uses, and a government and social system that always works to maintain and magnify that advantage.
Things are nowhere near as rosy when you look at how the other half lives and they can't be just excluded from the comparison as "non-white".
See, now, I happen to have grown up in Edmonton, and people there have the same grinning smiling North American culture as anywhere else on the continent. So, meh, no.
And almost half the population there is Ukrainian or Polish descent, too, lots of people only a couple generations or less away from the old country. But people there are pretty mainline North American culture.
Now, my father is German... and I grew up with that rather curt and blunt and critical influence, so.
>In Russian culture the smile is identified with laughter. Russians do not smile unless something funny happens and provides a reason for laughter. This fundamental difference in perception produces many unfortunate misunderstandings.
I think I've read this a few times before and I can hardly agree.
While smile to laughter to fun association is strong and rather obvious I think the main reason you see russian smile less often is that genuine smile is the clear sign of good mood and relative well being and we tend to keep those things for our close friends, family and simply a good company we feel click with.
And we are too straightforward for a forced\fake smile. If a russian thinks 'go f*ck yourself' about you - it will be on their face. But most likely you will hear it out loud.
UPD:
I also believe we are less emotional in general. At least when it comes to things like movies, shows etc. I was amazed when I witnessed americans reacting to Game of Thrones...
Not Russian but my wife is - grew up there until college age. She was saying this exact thing a couple weeks ago (which is why I took interest in this article): that smiling at a stranger will cause them to dismiss you as stupid. So I'd say Yes.
I am Polish and I can not confirm that. I felt a sharp decline in "smiles" after my move to Germany where your description fits much more. I see much more people smiling for no obvious reasons when I visit Poland from time to time. Something which is not perceived as something else but friendliness by my German SO though while I've witnessed Germans being perceived as very cold by US Americans for the way they are.
I've been also smilingly welcomed by Russian friends even though they may smile less on the average. I haven't been to Russia yes so I can't tell. Maybe they are just well assimilated here.
Maybe it only is all those fake smiles you get from the US service culture which is so over the top that everything else becomes nuanced.
That makes sense. My main context for comparison is US vs PL, and there's a largish difference between strangers and in public or service people and a much smaller difference with friends and family. If you start talking to a stranger in the grocery store in the US because you were both reaching for the same milk you might get a very big smile. I would never expect such an exaggerated reaction in PL, just a small nod or pardon me.
Also, service people are not supposed to be fake smiling, we are actually expecting their emotional labor on top of the labor of their job. They are supposed to be cheering us up with their genuinely good attitude and "changing someone's day for the better" with their smile. It's all pretty exhausting.
I've spend a decade working for an F500 US company here in Germany. The amount of bad news delivered with a fake smile was staggering. I lead to pure disgust within the German employee bubble making it actually stronger and the news worse. In the end I've been fired with one of those and some phrase along the "let's stay friends and meet again" line ;)
I was always quite surprised that there seems to never have been any online course teaching people who came over those basic things as they we online courses for everything else.
I mean, you don't expect us to just hand over all our dark secrets like that in an e-learning module, do ya? The service people are supposed to mean it (if they're big enough suckers), but you can be more two-faced as you climb the ladder. I'd describe American business culture as "exploitative backstabbing bloodlust with a smile and an optimistic mission statement".
This is a risky hypothesis, but could it have something to do with access to guns?
In a society when every stranger can potentially be armed, it might be prudent to somehow display the 'I intend no harm' sign upfront, and smile might be a good proxy for that? The 'the armed society is a polite society' thing?
Living in Europe, where owning guns is not common (and carrying personally very very rare), I don't feel compelled to display or require upfront any bigger signs of 'friendliness' to/from strangers, other than 'Hello/Guten Abend/Adieu'. If the situation becomes unpleasant, I can always leave w/o physical consequences (excl. assault situations).
In a gun-loving culture, I'd probably put more effort to lower risk of misunderstandings.
I don't think that's the case at all, based on variations in the US. The upper-class parts of LA are known for superficial friendliness, while New York is not, but in neither region is known for its gun culture.
Meanwhile parts of the Midwest that had a lot of Germanic immigrants are perceived as being "cold" compared to the southern states, and both tend to have high rates of gun ownership.
When I first moved to Southern California, I found the smiles quite off-putting. Living here for over a decade, I'm sure I do the same now.
Gun ownership is quite common in many parts of Europe. Finland in particular is nearly the same as the US in terms of percentage of households with firearms.
But [0] they are licenced for specific usages, and carry is not allowed outside of that context, and 'personal protection' hasn't been one (barring extant holders) since 1998.
But in practice it’s still extremely rare to encounter them day-to-day. For example Switzerland is very high but almost all guns are given by the state during military service and are kept locked away in case of invasion. Bullets are illegal.
The totals looks similar but in practice the situation with weapons is extremely different. You have basically no chance to encounter an armed person in the street.
Canadians have a similar smile-culture as Americans, but not a gun culture. I mean, a lot of people have guns for hunting or target practice, but you're not allowed to walk around with a pistol like you can in the US.
The situation is pretty serious, guys. Enemies are at the West. Enemies are at the East. Enemies are at the South. Enemies are at the North. Enemies are INSIDE our grandiose Russian civilization! Why are you smiling? Are you stupid? Maybe you dislike our grandiose Russian civilization, with grandiose Russian writers, like Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Hohol? Maybe you dislike our grandiose and mighty Russian language? Why are you talking in your stupid English language? Are you liking rotting West culture, which pushes their rotten songs in unprotected ears of our youth? ...
It's as accurate as can be accurate any statement about a culture that spans thousands kilometres from East to West and from South to North and contain multitude of subcultures within itself. I.e. it depends, but "yes" is generally closer to the truth than "no"
I spent a couple weeks in Krakow and one thing I noticed was how intensely people maintained eye contact when speaking to you. It seemed to be uniquely Polish, as I didn't notice it in Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, etc. Wondering if anyone else has noticed that or if it was just an anomaly.
I think it has changed a bit since then. There was not a lot to smile about in Russia in 2002. Not that now we smile at each other every time, but we do this more often and even if we don't faces are a lot less grumpy :)
It's quite accurate in terms of approach, but there are a lot of situations where smiling is more or less appropriate and wouldn't be considered as a rude move. For example, it's completely okay (almost) for service people to be smiling and approachable although it's not obligatory in any way (especially at small stores). At the same time if you are just smiling at strangers without saying any word, it could be perceived as a rudeness. If you smile and give a light nod, most people will think that you somehow know them. So, it's not that Russians are all grumpy and angry all the time, but they (we) need to have an explanation for your smile, you just can't smile without a reason, if that makes sense.
If Russians smile more (I do not know really), then the most likely explanation is a mixing of the USA culture into ours.
I being Russian just do not keep smile on my face when everything is just fine. I'll keep smiling when things go especially good. I'd laugh evilly^W when they go in unexpectedly good way. But small variations from a statistical average is not enough of an emotional reason to change my facial expression.
Statostical average is the key. If things made a habit of being extremely good, I'd stop smiling when they are extremely good. I'd wait for more exciting occasion.
This is such a great article imo that really captures fundamental societal and cultural differences. I would say that Sweden has a similar 'grave' approach to life and that smiling is reserved for funny situations.
Much as I love the US 'etiquette smile' when passing people in the street and meeting, social pressure to conform can mask stress, anxiety and solemnity. The English used to feel pretty uncomfortable about yanks grinning away at everything but they seem to have partially become Americanized in this regard. (I'm English originally but have lived in the US for decades).
I've never gotten used to the 'etiquette smile' (I have different internal terms for it) and try to watch out for it as much as possible; I also appear to be physically incapable of expressing an emotion that I do not actually feel so there is no danger of me ever doing this to others. There is a certain shallowness that often accompanies it that often puts me on guard: the larger the smile, the tighter I grab my wallet and the quicker I wish to terminate the interaction.
I can understand why you might presume it's shallowness but it's really a type of etiquette. Similar to offering a handshake. I'm Scottish rather than American but here babies are often encouraged to smile at family and friends. It's exactly the same as teaching please and thank you
What? No, Swedes smile a lot and have a lot of polite set phrases. Although it's more rare to hear people say "good" to an "how are you", it's usually some variation of "jovars", "can't complain".
Re: British/American cultural differences, I was reminded of this 1942 handbook for American servicemen in the UK.
> British Reserved, Not Unfriendly. You defeat enemy propaganda not by denying that these differences exist, but by admitting them openly and then trying to understand them. For instance : The British are often more reserved in conduct than we. On a small crowded island where forty-five million people live, each man learns to guard his privacy carefully-and is equally careful not to invade another man’s privacy.
> So if Britons sit in trains or busses without striking up conversation with you, it doesn’t mean they are being haughty and unfriendly. Probably they are paying more attention to you than you think. But they don’t speak to you because they don’t want to appear intrusive or rude.
That's a brilliant book. A friend of mine once bought an original copy in auction and let me read the whole thing.
I do agree with the GP that the American style has rubbed off on the British. Then again I'm Scottish and we've always been closer to the Irish in that regard.
In this mini-ethnography I present the main differences in perception of the smile in Russia and in the United States.
There are regional variations in the United States. In New England, NY and other parts of the Northeast, we are often quite serious/stone-faced in public, something that I have heard outsiders from the west coast and South observe. I also was struck by the demeanor of some friends from Brazil who always have a smile on their face, and seem to be more happy and upbeat even when things are not going well.
There was related discussion on HN about smiling and laughter that's worth reading:
In the US smiling wasn't as prevalent, at least in photographs. Look at any Civil War era picture and nobody is smiling in their portraits. I'm not sure when that started. I read somewhere that back then people thought people who smiled all the time were "simple minded." Now I can't help thinking that every time I see some marketing copy with some model smiling while playing with soap or something.
The reason for the severe facial expressions and the lack of smiles in 19th-century photographs was the extremely long exposure times that the technology required back then. It was hard to hold a smile still enough that the film could capture it without blur. You can't assume from those portraits that people rarely smiled compared to now.
>The reason for the severe facial expressions and the lack of smiles in 19th-century photographs was the extremely long exposure times that the technology required back then.
That's one theory, another one I've seen is people had bad teeth, but everyone had bad teeth so I don't see how that would be an issue. I like the theory that they thought constant smiling was for simpletons.
I have just browsed much of Adventures in the Atomic Age: From Watts to Washington by Glenn Seaborg, a Nobelist in Chemistry. He quoted in passing Tom Landry's dictum that "You can't think and smile at the same time.", but in the context of saying that some can: Enrico Fermi was always smiling, and always thinking.
> Someone told me if someone is smiling to you in Russia, they are probably scamming you.
Russia also has dash cams aplenty because apparently pedestrians will willingly jump in front of cars for insurance money. Maybe they're smiling while they do it, but it seems like you can be scammed either way.
My personal take on smiles is that they're welcome if genuine, but can have adverse effects when forced. Many people think that displaying a fake smile for example at the workplace would help with interactions, especially professional ones, but rest assured that when I see someone faking a smile, particularly those working hard to look warm and sincere, I immediately feel I could be manipulated and get on the defensive.
...But I speak from personal experience of being shown daily the widest warm smile at the workplace from the same person that a few months later would dig my professional grave, so your mileage will probably vary.
I live in a culture where being nice and smiling to people is the norm. It's really nice interacting with strangers because they'll always nice and smiles at you (even road rage is particularly rare), but this also makes backstabbing office politics particularly painful, especially when you're still expected to display nice and smiling behaviour even after such backstabbing.
I guess you can't have the best of both world for this stuff.
IME, there's basically no correlation between your facial expression and whether you respect and work well with others. Someone who just smiles at you all the time is going to either seem nutty, or at best look like he's being really nervous and trying to find humor in the interaction somehow. It's a sign of weakness and might make others take you less seriously. On the flip side a firm expression and stiff upper lip can also connote respect for others.
technically speaking smiling increases airflow and thus improves work of the brain and the body. So one of first things i do in tough/stressful situations is i make myself smile. It has immediate effect of de-anxiety and improves attention (like kind of making yourself an impartial side observer of situation which is especially important when you are outnumbered), and back in Russia i would for example smile when find myself in a bind and before starting delivering punches if/when it would come to it, and in US i smile if something gets me frustrated as the Russian style of response to frustration isn't acceptable here and before i start delivering politely shaped microaggressions (the thing which seems to replace punches here :)
I had the same impression traveling to Bolivia. I am Brazilian and we generally smile when speaking with someone. But in La Paz people usually had this serious look on their faces and a kind of difficult to approach semblance. I imagined poverty could explain that, but Brazil is a bit poorer than Russia. Maybe instead of poverty, we could think about hardship in a more general sense? I find very hard to believe that considering someone smiling insulting is a healthy outcome of a culture.
Russians can be the sincerest friends you know, smiling to you. They also can be your fiercest enemies, still smiling to you. Sometimes I think this is the source of the hollywood/McCarthy myth of bad russians. TL;DR: If all russians would play poker, the world would be broke.
Russian who travelled extensively through South America here. I'm not sure what's wrong with altiplano bolivians, but my impression was that they are not just grumpy, but genuinely unfriendly (and Russian cultural background kinda helps with differentiating the two). I used to speak quite decent Spanish back then, so I tried communication - and anywhere else on the continent my attempts were enough to break the ice and become friends, but not in La Paz.
So far La Paz and bolivian altiplano in general is the only place in South America where I don't want to come back.
With masks being socially acceptable in most if not all the world now, I wonder if the lack of visible smile that causes will change the perception of a smile in places where people usually smile by default.
I wouldn't assume that masks will remain socially acceptable. I’m traveling at the moment in a touristic region of my country, and in spite of masks still being legally required in shops and (before your food is served) restaurants, almost no one is actually wearing them any more. I did wear a mask as I walked into a hotel reception tonight, but the proprietor outright said I was silly to do so, and she pointed to everyone else around. It was very clear that I had committed a faux pas.
My expectation is that by years end, in Europe and North America at least, mask-wearers will be gently mocked everywhere outside of some large metropolitan areas (which have their own epidemiological concerns), and there won’t be any kind of long-term impact on facial expressions.
At first while reading the comment I thought of figurative mask, the one that wears of the fake smile. It was making sense. Only at the end of the comment I realized it was about blue masks.
The other part of this is that smiling when you don’t really want to, at people you don’t really like, as part of your job, is really exhausting. In the United States labor and especially service sector labor is very disempowered so they don’t really have the option to refuse to smile. In places where labor has a bit more leverage they might be able to. There’s also a special voice you put on, the customer service voice. Culture is often downstream from material conditions.
Austrian here, we are somewhat in between Russians and Americans, when it comes to smiling.
But what I can tell you is that life is just so much better when people smile at you, even if it might not be a hundred percent genuine. My comparison stems from having worked with both Russians and Americans. Being around grumpy Russians all day long makes live really miserable.
Cannot agree enough. I joined a startup that very clearly initially hired for Russian cultural fit (friends hiring friends) and the mood was like attending a funeral on a daily basis. During interviewing, the hiring manager very cleverly had the minority of native-born Americans speak to me so I never got a feel for the actual culture.
I couldn't imagine working long for a place where every day seemed like solitary misery, especially remote during a pandemic, where rapport and ease of communication matters a lot. Didn't help that the quality of engineering work was absolutely abysmal (see friends hiring friends). Was contacting recruiters within a week.
Smiling and being entertaining are not correlated (personal experience after a few decades of being alive). There are few everyday situations worse than being welcomed by a smile which looks fake one mile out. A genuine smile is not an every-second gesture.
Weird, the only big “Russian cultural fit” issue I can think of is gendered norms and complete disregard for “political correctness”. People often make jokes at the workplace and make small talk, but yes, we don’t usually have big smiles during normal conversations or greetings.
I can't second this. Everytime I'm in the US I'm scared of all the friendly, smiling people, asking "How are you?" in such a friendly tone, it's delightful. Of course it's faked, anyone knows, and dare if you'd reply with "not good, my aunt just died". Awkward situation ensues, everybody tries to get out of the situation ("and what would you like to have for breakfast tomorrow?").
Now replay the same situation in another ("non-friendly") culture. Most of the "not-friendly" cultures would invite you to a free beer, asking what happened etc.
I'm an American and I love smiling at strangers and receiving a genuine smile in return. It's the perfect minimal conversation: no words, just sharing a moment of mutual positivity and kinship. It's like you said the perfect thing, except you didn't have to think of anything clever.
It sounds as though people in some countries interpret it as if the smiling person is on the inside of a joke and you're on the outside, or even the object of ridicule. As if the default is hostile intent. It sounds like a terrible thing to assume about your fellow stranger, to be honest.
Maybe the point is that if you start off assuming maximum hostility, the reality is more likely to be a pleasant surprise?
At any rate, we have common ground when it comes to those meaningless questions. They're hollow and they ruin the perfection of a nice wordless smile or simple "hi" or "hey". The absolute worst is when you pass a stranger and say "hi" and they respond to your back as they walk off into the distance, "hey, how ya doin?"
I don’t think people are assuming hostility, the article explains that it simply means a different thing e.g. laughter instead of positivity. Imagine if you were to go about your day winking at everyone you saw, people would think you were strange or somewhat crazy, they might think you’re hitting on them or perhaps had some sinister intent.
> It sounds as though people in some countries interpret it as if the smiling person is on the inside of a joke and you're on the outside, or even the object of ridicule.
I would say this is pretty common in the USA. Anyone smiling or laughing, especially in the customer service industry, can easily be interpreted that they are up to something. Makes customers uncomfortable. Obviously a generalized statement, but it seems most food and customer service industries despise their customers.
I don't know how much of this is me being Finnish, but I personally don't even know how to smile at will; a smile is something that happens naturally and trying to deliberately smile at people when I'm not actually feeling it just makes me feel dishonest and usually results in a grimace instead.
While I might really be enjoying a good walk in the sun for example, I can't really say that it makes me want to smile at every random passer-by.
The curious thing to me is why all of the generalising people are doing in this comment section is any different from “perpetuating stereotypes”, which almost universally has negative connotations.
If you’re Finnish, I might say you don’t often smile but I bet you know how to neatly drift a rally car through a forest at considerable speed.
Stereotypes do have a bit of truth to them, usually, though sometimes the stereotypes are just people misinterpreting others based on their own expectations. I don't know how to drive rally at all, but there are aspects of the "stereotypical Finn" that I recognize in myself.
Finns generally demand a larger personal space and thus may appear as "cold" to someone used to being in closer proximity, but it is what it is.
Believe me, I'd love to be able to act less reserved around new people, but I find it hideously difficult, and if I don't feel outgoing, I can't force myself to act that way because it causes me intense discomfort.
As for smiling, it might just be that for Finns a "neutral" face is perfectly polite and a stranger's smile elicits a stronger reaction (either positive or negative depending on context) while people from the US might expect a smile as the default state and thus react less strongly to it.
You are thinking that they’re assuming hostility, when all they assume is you being neutral and tactful by default. The logic is: “we don’t know each other and have no reason to feel happy about something between us, for there is none [yet]”. If you smile at me, I think that you’re either happy about me, i.e. are focusing on me (which is inappropriate unless you’re someone I could in theory adore(smile at genuinely?), e.g. a girl, a puppy, etc), or you find something funny in me. It’s nice that you are open and friendly, but the way you do it isn’t tactful, and is too intimate for a stranger. You’d probably feel the same if you stood on a pier alone watching sunset, and some stranger moved beside, right next to your shoulder, never saying a word. So open, friendly and non-hostile, but something wrong – that’s personal space in action. We just have emotional personal space that no one dares to enter without invitation or at least enough courage.
It’s not a criticism, just explanation of what other people feel. Now for a criticism (well lack of understanding really):
Americans are obsessed with being Happy. They’re always smiling, and when bad things happen, they’re sad, but at the same time they’re okay, it’s fine. But isn’t that a contradiction? They are lying. What’s even wrong with feeling bad (or just neutrally sad, inert, nostalgic) and not finding other’s happiness encouraging? Why are they even copying other’s emotions, when they should have their own? People have a spectrum emotions (more than 50 of them) for serious neurological reasons, and they feel every one of them, not only “good” and “fine”. Why are they denying everything except happiness and love, when it’s normal to feel all of the spectrum sometimes?
Sorry, I wish we were better at this. I can tell you that there's a difference between our quick "hey, how are you" said in passing and "how are you" where the person is facing you, not moving, and waiting for an answer. In the second situation, Americans would consider anyone who doesn't respond to sad news with concern to be rude. Not many will invite you to drink on the spot, though.
In America, if your aunt just died, I would say "really bad, but thanks for asking". They asked superficially; I answered superficially but honestly. I left an open door for them to ask more if they want to. If they don't, well, it was superficial conversation, and I won't be surprised or disappointed, and I hope I didn't put them on the spot too much.
I have to tell you as an American and kinda grumpy one at that, if you get a smile and hi on the sidewalk as we pass each other it’s purely out of love for mankind.
You're misunderstanding what the phrase "how are you" means in the US. It is not a literal question, but a set phrase with implicit social rules for "correct" responses.
This doesn't mean the person asking is faking kindness - but also understand they're not actually asking for a rundown of how your life is going. Negative responses to the question are ok, just not deeply personal answers.
Tom Scott has an excellent video that addresses this very issue.
I always enjoyed the "how is it going", and then not even waiting for a response before moving forward with the conversation. I'm a native born American, have traveled outside of the country only a handful of times, and yet I still find it jarring to be asked that.
It's the same in Russian actually. You're saying "how are you" ("как дела") after "hello" ("привет"), but you're not really expecting any meaningful answer other than "I'm OK" ("нормально") or "I'm fine" ("отлично").
But it might be one way to start a conversation when you want to tell something you don't like. Like "How are you? I'll live. What happened? ...". But it's more of closed friends conversation when you can feel OK sharing your burdens with other person. I guess, similar thing could happen in US?
My go to answer is, "can't complain". Vague enough to leave it alone if the question is trivial, but also open-ended enough to expound upon if the other person is genuinely interested in my well-being.
I did it last night with a cashier and she laughed and was, I think, amused by the novel response. It seemed to brighten her up a small amount. She then continued to make conversation by saying “Well let’s see if we can’t get you to better than normal.” That was slightly offputting and I wish she didn’t feel the need to take it there. I’m perfectly content with feeling “normal”.
I suppose the way I think of it is like dynamic range of expression. Normal is baseline and perfectly suitable. It’s where I like being. Great or bad are for special cases where I feel extraordinary.
What you write is true from an US point of view, and that's the point of my comment. In Europe you wouldn't ask anyone how she/he feels when you don't want to accept and reply to the response, even if it is deviating from the expected (happy) response.
I don't think so. Try it "not good, my aunt just died" and not every American but many would try to comfort you. Not saying it wouldn't be a bit awkward but that it's not 'just faked' and everyone tries to get out of any real emotion.
I have people tell me their bad news or downers pretty often when I greet them with “how are you?”, and my care or sympathy for the situation they’re in is not at all insincere.
I’m half German, and my grandfather always found it absurd to visit the US and have everyone saying “thank you” and “sorry” and smiling all the time. His opinion was that this behavior devalued the true meaning of a “thank you” or a smile.
Interestingly, Germans have now adopted two words for sorry, one being just “sorry” (spoken with a guttural “r”) and the other being “Entschuldigung“ — literally translates to something like “acceptance of blame.” The German “sorry” is much more common, and “Entschuldigung” is reserved for the true apologies, maybe analogous to “I apologize” in American English. Then it might be “ich entschuldige mich” or “I place the fault on myself.”
I mention this because it seems the “American” way of being more colloquially friendly is becoming more adopted in parts of Europe, especially by younger generations in areas like Germany and the Netherlands. Maybe this is just from exposure to American media.
Whatever the cause, I find this shift pleasant, as it saves me from having to code-switch between American friendliness and German staunchness when I talk with friends or family there (except for the older generations).
The phrase 'Ich entschuldige mich' is an abomination. The literal translation would be 'I excuse myself'.
Instead, you're supposed to say 'Ich bitte um Entschuldigung' (I beg your forgiveness) - thus you're asking the person who was wronged for forgiveness. It should not be the choice of the wrongdoer to decide whether to be forgiven or not. Though to be fair, commonly it's used just as you described.
If I remember correctly, Kraus has at least once written about this specific phrase.
Yes, fair point, the "ent" is literally something like "de-," so you are "de-blaming" yourself or "freeing <subject> from blame."
But in common parlance, I think the phrase "Ich entschuldige mich" is really meant more to say "I apologize" than anything else. I guess this could be a place where descriptivists and prescriptivists differ in their interpretations (and I lean a bit more towards being a descriptivist).
I haven't studied German society closely enough to know what people really mean with this phrase, but this is how I've always interpreted and used it, and other people seem to use it in this manner as well.
I thought it meant mostly "Sorry, I'll have to be absent for a while" -- as in, a euphemism for "I have to go to the loo". Isn't that how it's often used in English too?
My favorite part about the pandemic is that I can smile constantly under my mask, even while picking out soup at the grocery store, without looking like an idiot.
It's not fake to smile at someone you do not know and ask how they are. It's merely a greeting.
All cultures have context clues. Your surgeon might have just met you, but be legitimately concerned about your condition. Your best friend might be interested in your emotional state. The stranger on the street might merely be "polite", or hoping/wishing you are having a good day, but neither wanting to hear a full dissertation on your emotional state, nor a recitation of your medical history that a doctor might find relevant.
I am American. I have transitioned from saying "How are ya?" as a greeting to "Good [day,morning,evening]" etc. It's every bit as polite and does not feign concern.
It's just a different protocol. You don't respond with details right away, you say, "Actually not great" with some emotion. If the person cares, they will ask, what's wrong? Then you unload.
You might as well get mad at HTTP when you send a malformed request.
This sounds like a made up distinction. If I asked someone "how are you" and they reply about how they're having a hard time because a family member died I would definitely not "try to get out of the situation", and I can say the same for the people around me, for the most part.
IME as a US resident, it's not fake, for most of your audience. It's fake for the natural slice of the audience that are on the selfish/narcissist spectrum - they're forced to parrot it as a broader cultural norm, but for everyone else who's even merely neutral on the empathy spectrum, it's a license to actually be nice and not get hammered with suspicion for it.
That said - it has to be noted that if you're interacting with "service workers" (any clerks at stores, hotels, restaurants, etc), there's a really horrible catch-22 ubiquitous in the corporate world. Those people are forced by corporate rules to be obsequiously friendly ... but are also so overworked that they generally have no time to actually help someone with anything that's not a direct job duty.
It really sucks because, traditionally, in the sense of i.e. a bartender/barista, that's actually supposed to be a large part of the "hospitality" job. They're supposed to be someone you can talk at length to, and traditionally have functioned like an entry-level therapist/counsellor in society. Unfortunately the fast-food mentality has trickled into a lot of institutions like that, and most of them are too busy fulfilling orders to do anything of the sort.
I had a language exchange with an austrian once. I was joking and chatting with him the whole time but he was always reluctant to smile. By hot damn did I get him to do it.
> even if it might not be a hundred percent genuine
I reckon there are a couple of ways we could define a 'genuine' smile. Most strictly, as a basically involuntary expression of emotion. More loosely, we could include voluntary smiles as long as they are a sincere signal of goodwill. I don't really want to be smiled at by people who hate me, but I think there's plenty to be said for cultural norms in favour of 'genuine' smiles under the looser definition.
Common telesales advice is to smile before you pick up the phone, because people can hear your smile and are generally more receptive to whatever you're going to say if you sound friendly. I wonder if this trick works in Russia?
This the perfect opportunity to suggest a relevant book: "The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia" by Michael Booth. He's a Brit who married a Dane, relocated to Denmark, and was struck by the cultural differences between Scandinavian cultures and his own. So he wrote a book.
In it, he observes that smiles and jokes and easy conversation are more common among Brits and Americans than many Europeans, and suggests that, as you proceed northward and eastward through the continent, facial expressions tend to grow more sober and the tendency toward small talk fades. Not that these peoples are more unhappy, but there is generally less inclination to idly chat or joke around.
The author offers numerous observations, interpretations, and interviews regarding local perspectives on 'happiness' during his travels. An insightful read that doesn't take itself too seriously.
I wonder why. Because the Nordic folks grew up around less people and those around really didn't chat much? They were passed and passing along the not-chatty culture? The weather sucks? Too much white affecting the mind in some manner? Atleast you have world-class social security?! :)
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 378 ms ] threadI imagine most people in the Middle Ages (and much later) had chipped, missing, buckled, crooked and stained teeth.
Now pristine teeth are a signal of wealth (even though they're usually 100% fake veneers, at least among actors and models) so people want to signal their wealth by smiling prominently.
https://time.com/4568032/smile-serious-old-photos/
Also done with slaves, from what I've read. Nowadays it's voluntary, sort of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powidl
[1] https://www.consciousbreathing.com/articles/shut-your-mouth-...
But unless you have a secret mucus prevention technique, you'll mouth breathe.
I was offered a tongue depressor by my childhood dentist to help fix a crooked tooth without orthodontia, so when Nestor's book mentioned one orthodontist suggesting that positioning one's tongue to touch the roof of the mouth would matter, I dismissed that part as probably the weakest in the book. That said, the science overall seems to be evolving, research in breathing and the nose apparently increasing, and Nestor is meticulous in maintaining references, including online. Many might be comfortable with some uncertainty and not dismissing this all as pseudoscience. I commend Nestor's reporting.
I also hope that, if industrial civilization eventually passes, and for now where severe poverty without dentistry exists, people will find again whatever practices better prevented dental caries.
However, I have the impression that this is basically as true today as it was then.
Unfortunately 20th-century photo magazines, TV, and later Instagram and selfies changed that...
Seeing them helps counter the general impression we get from seeing so many dour-faced Victorians from photographs of that era.
[1] - https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/24/smiling-victorians...
Well, it's complicated. Glaukopis could also be translated as "blue eyed", or "grey eyed", not just "owl eyed".
Being the goddess of wisdom and handicraft (among other things), perception was a crucial attribute. Having big eyes (like the owl) could be interpreted as having good visual perception.
But it's not just about the size. She's also described as having "bright eyes", or "flashing eyes", or "darting eyes". It's more about the acuity of perception, than about some emotional aspect.
Same as how back then you could say “in the war” and people knew you meant WWII, but nowaways youth may give you a confused look.
But yes at least in Canada we used to use the east/west framing, and in respect of russia. In 2002 they were the more prominent power compared to China. That situation has heavily reversed.
Also, the "winning side" is allowed the freedom to move forwards and forget the past quicker. As a Yankee we don't think much about the US civil war. The deeper a northerner goes into the south the more you are reminded that their side did not win the civil war, they remember that shit, and you better be careful what you say about it less you get run out of town.
[edit spelling; I had double checked myself but still fucked it up]
Yuri Gagarin
The USA was and is a warmongering socialist state. Capitalism certainly doesn't prescribe huge spendings and nationalisation.
Russia was and is a warmongering socialist state. The redeeming factor, and likely what makes "the communist" sounds reasonable, is that the Soviets defined themselves communist
"He's fed up. He was glad to see Leonov land. Someone to talk to after an eternity alone! But Leonov tried to stuff his head full of Lenin. So when the American landed, the guy fled to his camp. But the American right away crammed a Coke down his throat, after making him say thank you first."
People often assume something's wrong if you never smile, or, worse, frown.
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.
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:
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.
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!
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.
I think otherwise though it you smile a lot for no reason people will think you are a little foolish or loony, but it isn’t dangerous.
I agree with the author that Americans and Russians have a surprising amount of similarities when you get past some surface level differences.
The latitude of Warsaw is 52.2° N, which is about the same latitude as northern Canada (Edmonton).
Moscow is 55.7, which is the same as southern Alaska.
Days are shorter, darker, and colder. It has an impact on your mood.
Plus, the average income for a Pole is $18,000/year, whereas for the average White American worker its $40,000/year. Cost of living is often lower in America than in Poland (excepting Seattle, NY etc.). So materially the average American is a lot better off.
Is it?
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/
Nationally the US is near the OECD middle, and ahead of both Britain and New Zealand on education. Poland certainly scores well, not "miles ahead" well.
About 1/3 of Americans are getting a four year degree these days. The university systems in the US are vastly superior to anything Poland has. A third tier university in the US is as good as a first tier university in Poland. Forget about the second or first tier universities, Poland has nothing like a University of Virginia, Michigan or UCLA (all second tier), much less the elite schools. Which is why Poland isn't producing very much in the way of innovation or economic output. Poland's economy hasn't net expanded since 2008 (even before the pandemic), if their education system was so great it would show up in their economy.
Poland is also not miles ahead on healthcare at the median. The median American has full healthcare coverage and has faster access to healthcare than most socialized medicine nations, including Canada (where you'll wait months or years for procedures that Americans can get in weeks). We're talking about the median here, which is: an American earning $40,000 to $60,000 per year, with health insurance and richer than the median in either Germany or Sweden. The median American also has routine access to the latest medical technology, which the median Polish person has zero access to.
Miles ahead? Nope.
And if we're comparing fairly on demographics, the median white American demolishes the median white Pole, dramatically and across the board. The median white American is among the wealthiest medians on the planet (three times richer than the median Swede or German) and has an extreme income only comparable to nations like Switzerland and Norway. The US has taken on a dramatic amount of third-world immigration over the past ~45 years, which has persistently pushed against its median scoring as poor third world immigrants flood into the US (which debases the median as it happens). It takes a long time to lift the education and income levels for tens of millions of people coming from the third world with absolutely nothing and having to learn a new culture and language. That said, pretty soon the median Hispanic person in the US will be richer than the median German or Swede as well, so progress is occurring rapidly.
I think that the bell curve works the same everywhere, and even most US schools (excepting the very top ones), don't have the opportunity to fill more than 20-30% of their student body with brilliant kids from abroad.
Poland has more average years in education, a higher high-school graduation rate, higher PSIA scores. More Poles get tertiary degrees, 44%, a full 10% higher than the USA. 7/10 of those degrees are masters level. And by the way, no one needs to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for their degrees.
I have no idea where you got that talking point about no net economic expansion since 2008. Poland's inflation adjusted GDP is one of the fastest growing in Europe, all while its population is dropping due to low birthrates and net migration to the rest of Europe. Its life expectancy is one year lower than the USA, which is already one year lower than the OECD average, but at least you can't be bankrupted by your medical bills.
Rich Americans have it great. The best schools in the world, enormous houses, new cars, the best cutting edge medicine, and extremely high paying jobs that build products the whole world uses, and a government and social system that always works to maintain and magnify that advantage.
Things are nowhere near as rosy when you look at how the other half lives and they can't be just excluded from the comparison as "non-white".
And almost half the population there is Ukrainian or Polish descent, too, lots of people only a couple generations or less away from the old country. But people there are pretty mainline North American culture.
Now, my father is German... and I grew up with that rather curt and blunt and critical influence, so.
I think I've read this a few times before and I can hardly agree.
While smile to laughter to fun association is strong and rather obvious I think the main reason you see russian smile less often is that genuine smile is the clear sign of good mood and relative well being and we tend to keep those things for our close friends, family and simply a good company we feel click with.
And we are too straightforward for a forced\fake smile. If a russian thinks 'go f*ck yourself' about you - it will be on their face. But most likely you will hear it out loud.
UPD:
I also believe we are less emotional in general. At least when it comes to things like movies, shows etc. I was amazed when I witnessed americans reacting to Game of Thrones...
I've been also smilingly welcomed by Russian friends even though they may smile less on the average. I haven't been to Russia yes so I can't tell. Maybe they are just well assimilated here.
Maybe it only is all those fake smiles you get from the US service culture which is so over the top that everything else becomes nuanced.
Also, service people are not supposed to be fake smiling, we are actually expecting their emotional labor on top of the labor of their job. They are supposed to be cheering us up with their genuinely good attitude and "changing someone's day for the better" with their smile. It's all pretty exhausting.
I was always quite surprised that there seems to never have been any online course teaching people who came over those basic things as they we online courses for everything else.
In a society when every stranger can potentially be armed, it might be prudent to somehow display the 'I intend no harm' sign upfront, and smile might be a good proxy for that? The 'the armed society is a polite society' thing?
Living in Europe, where owning guns is not common (and carrying personally very very rare), I don't feel compelled to display or require upfront any bigger signs of 'friendliness' to/from strangers, other than 'Hello/Guten Abend/Adieu'. If the situation becomes unpleasant, I can always leave w/o physical consequences (excl. assault situations).
In a gun-loving culture, I'd probably put more effort to lower risk of misunderstandings.
Meanwhile parts of the Midwest that had a lot of Germanic immigrants are perceived as being "cold" compared to the southern states, and both tend to have high rates of gun ownership.
When I first moved to Southern California, I found the smiles quite off-putting. Living here for over a decade, I'm sure I do the same now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_of_households_with_gun...
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Finland
This is the case in many other parts of Europe, too.
The totals looks similar but in practice the situation with weapons is extremely different. You have basically no chance to encounter an armed person in the street.
And so on 24x7 at Russian TV.
I being Russian just do not keep smile on my face when everything is just fine. I'll keep smiling when things go especially good. I'd laugh evilly^W when they go in unexpectedly good way. But small variations from a statistical average is not enough of an emotional reason to change my facial expression.
Statostical average is the key. If things made a habit of being extremely good, I'd stop smiling when they are extremely good. I'd wait for more exciting occasion.
Much as I love the US 'etiquette smile' when passing people in the street and meeting, social pressure to conform can mask stress, anxiety and solemnity. The English used to feel pretty uncomfortable about yanks grinning away at everything but they seem to have partially become Americanized in this regard. (I'm English originally but have lived in the US for decades).
Neither Swedes or the Nordic peoples see themselves as gloomy as others do, though, so in that sense they're a lot like Russians.
> British Reserved, Not Unfriendly. You defeat enemy propaganda not by denying that these differences exist, but by admitting them openly and then trying to understand them. For instance : The British are often more reserved in conduct than we. On a small crowded island where forty-five million people live, each man learns to guard his privacy carefully-and is equally careful not to invade another man’s privacy.
> So if Britons sit in trains or busses without striking up conversation with you, it doesn’t mean they are being haughty and unfriendly. Probably they are paying more attention to you than you think. But they don’t speak to you because they don’t want to appear intrusive or rude.
https://flashbak.com/1942-extracts-from-gi-handbook-instruct...
I do agree with the GP that the American style has rubbed off on the British. Then again I'm Scottish and we've always been closer to the Irish in that regard.
There are regional variations in the United States. In New England, NY and other parts of the Northeast, we are often quite serious/stone-faced in public, something that I have heard outsiders from the west coast and South observe. I also was struck by the demeanor of some friends from Brazil who always have a smile on their face, and seem to be more happy and upbeat even when things are not going well.
There was related discussion on HN about smiling and laughter that's worth reading:
From apes to birds, animal species that “laugh” (arstechnica.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27193602
That's one theory, another one I've seen is people had bad teeth, but everyone had bad teeth so I don't see how that would be an issue. I like the theory that they thought constant smiling was for simpletons.
https://history.nebraska.gov/blog/why-so-serious-3-reasons-w...
>You can't assume from those portraits that people rarely smiled compared to now.
Where did I say that?
Someone told me if someone is smiling to you in Russia, they are probably scamming you.
A smile given away too freely for no reason can be perceived as fake and suspicious.
Russia also has dash cams aplenty because apparently pedestrians will willingly jump in front of cars for insurance money. Maybe they're smiling while they do it, but it seems like you can be scammed either way.
I guess you can't have the best of both world for this stuff.
It’s a perfect vehicle for its message.
Njet, Teddy Kgb didn't win.
So far La Paz and bolivian altiplano in general is the only place in South America where I don't want to come back.
Down in Santa Cruz folks are cool though.
My expectation is that by years end, in Europe and North America at least, mask-wearers will be gently mocked everywhere outside of some large metropolitan areas (which have their own epidemiological concerns), and there won’t be any kind of long-term impact on facial expressions.
https://youtu.be/A47SSXdUdvw
I couldn't imagine working long for a place where every day seemed like solitary misery, especially remote during a pandemic, where rapport and ease of communication matters a lot. Didn't help that the quality of engineering work was absolutely abysmal (see friends hiring friends). Was contacting recruiters within a week.
Now replay the same situation in another ("non-friendly") culture. Most of the "not-friendly" cultures would invite you to a free beer, asking what happened etc.
It sounds as though people in some countries interpret it as if the smiling person is on the inside of a joke and you're on the outside, or even the object of ridicule. As if the default is hostile intent. It sounds like a terrible thing to assume about your fellow stranger, to be honest.
Maybe the point is that if you start off assuming maximum hostility, the reality is more likely to be a pleasant surprise?
At any rate, we have common ground when it comes to those meaningless questions. They're hollow and they ruin the perfection of a nice wordless smile or simple "hi" or "hey". The absolute worst is when you pass a stranger and say "hi" and they respond to your back as they walk off into the distance, "hey, how ya doin?"
I would say this is pretty common in the USA. Anyone smiling or laughing, especially in the customer service industry, can easily be interpreted that they are up to something. Makes customers uncomfortable. Obviously a generalized statement, but it seems most food and customer service industries despise their customers.
While I might really be enjoying a good walk in the sun for example, I can't really say that it makes me want to smile at every random passer-by.
If you’re Finnish, I might say you don’t often smile but I bet you know how to neatly drift a rally car through a forest at considerable speed.
Why is some generalisation good? And others bad?
Finns generally demand a larger personal space and thus may appear as "cold" to someone used to being in closer proximity, but it is what it is.
Believe me, I'd love to be able to act less reserved around new people, but I find it hideously difficult, and if I don't feel outgoing, I can't force myself to act that way because it causes me intense discomfort.
As for smiling, it might just be that for Finns a "neutral" face is perfectly polite and a stranger's smile elicits a stronger reaction (either positive or negative depending on context) while people from the US might expect a smile as the default state and thus react less strongly to it.
It’s not a criticism, just explanation of what other people feel. Now for a criticism (well lack of understanding really):
Americans are obsessed with being Happy. They’re always smiling, and when bad things happen, they’re sad, but at the same time they’re okay, it’s fine. But isn’t that a contradiction? They are lying. What’s even wrong with feeling bad (or just neutrally sad, inert, nostalgic) and not finding other’s happiness encouraging? Why are they even copying other’s emotions, when they should have their own? People have a spectrum emotions (more than 50 of them) for serious neurological reasons, and they feel every one of them, not only “good” and “fine”. Why are they denying everything except happiness and love, when it’s normal to feel all of the spectrum sometimes?
This doesn't mean the person asking is faking kindness - but also understand they're not actually asking for a rundown of how your life is going. Negative responses to the question are ok, just not deeply personal answers.
Tom Scott has an excellent video that addresses this very issue.
https://youtu.be/eGnH0KAXhCw
But it might be one way to start a conversation when you want to tell something you don't like. Like "How are you? I'll live. What happened? ...". But it's more of closed friends conversation when you can feel OK sharing your burdens with other person. I guess, similar thing could happen in US?
[0]: https://youtu.be/vm-MrkoJPC8?t=35
-- What, "can't complain"? Really? You're in a Siberian prison camp, starving and freezing your toes and fingers off, and you "can't complain"?
-- Yes, when you're in a Siberian prison camp, you can't complain...
I did it last night with a cashier and she laughed and was, I think, amused by the novel response. It seemed to brighten her up a small amount. She then continued to make conversation by saying “Well let’s see if we can’t get you to better than normal.” That was slightly offputting and I wish she didn’t feel the need to take it there. I’m perfectly content with feeling “normal”.
I suppose the way I think of it is like dynamic range of expression. Normal is baseline and perfectly suitable. It’s where I like being. Great or bad are for special cases where I feel extraordinary.
I have people tell me their bad news or downers pretty often when I greet them with “how are you?”, and my care or sympathy for the situation they’re in is not at all insincere.
I’m half German, and my grandfather always found it absurd to visit the US and have everyone saying “thank you” and “sorry” and smiling all the time. His opinion was that this behavior devalued the true meaning of a “thank you” or a smile.
Interestingly, Germans have now adopted two words for sorry, one being just “sorry” (spoken with a guttural “r”) and the other being “Entschuldigung“ — literally translates to something like “acceptance of blame.” The German “sorry” is much more common, and “Entschuldigung” is reserved for the true apologies, maybe analogous to “I apologize” in American English. Then it might be “ich entschuldige mich” or “I place the fault on myself.”
I mention this because it seems the “American” way of being more colloquially friendly is becoming more adopted in parts of Europe, especially by younger generations in areas like Germany and the Netherlands. Maybe this is just from exposure to American media.
Whatever the cause, I find this shift pleasant, as it saves me from having to code-switch between American friendliness and German staunchness when I talk with friends or family there (except for the older generations).
Instead, you're supposed to say 'Ich bitte um Entschuldigung' (I beg your forgiveness) - thus you're asking the person who was wronged for forgiveness. It should not be the choice of the wrongdoer to decide whether to be forgiven or not. Though to be fair, commonly it's used just as you described.
If I remember correctly, Kraus has at least once written about this specific phrase.
But in common parlance, I think the phrase "Ich entschuldige mich" is really meant more to say "I apologize" than anything else. I guess this could be a place where descriptivists and prescriptivists differ in their interpretations (and I lean a bit more towards being a descriptivist).
I haven't studied German society closely enough to know what people really mean with this phrase, but this is how I've always interpreted and used it, and other people seem to use it in this manner as well.
You wouldn't say "sorry" apologising for coming late to school/ work in Germany that would be too casual in such a situation.
There's only one word 'y'all' need: 'cheers'.
All cultures have context clues. Your surgeon might have just met you, but be legitimately concerned about your condition. Your best friend might be interested in your emotional state. The stranger on the street might merely be "polite", or hoping/wishing you are having a good day, but neither wanting to hear a full dissertation on your emotional state, nor a recitation of your medical history that a doctor might find relevant.
You might as well get mad at HTTP when you send a malformed request.
That said - it has to be noted that if you're interacting with "service workers" (any clerks at stores, hotels, restaurants, etc), there's a really horrible catch-22 ubiquitous in the corporate world. Those people are forced by corporate rules to be obsequiously friendly ... but are also so overworked that they generally have no time to actually help someone with anything that's not a direct job duty.
It really sucks because, traditionally, in the sense of i.e. a bartender/barista, that's actually supposed to be a large part of the "hospitality" job. They're supposed to be someone you can talk at length to, and traditionally have functioned like an entry-level therapist/counsellor in society. Unfortunately the fast-food mentality has trickled into a lot of institutions like that, and most of them are too busy fulfilling orders to do anything of the sort.
I reckon there are a couple of ways we could define a 'genuine' smile. Most strictly, as a basically involuntary expression of emotion. More loosely, we could include voluntary smiles as long as they are a sincere signal of goodwill. I don't really want to be smiled at by people who hate me, but I think there's plenty to be said for cultural norms in favour of 'genuine' smiles under the looser definition.
This is a very questionable claim. I think such association is true for humans in general and even for some mammals.
Their culture just discourages happiness. Look at the Russian literature - that's an ocean of suffering.
In it, he observes that smiles and jokes and easy conversation are more common among Brits and Americans than many Europeans, and suggests that, as you proceed northward and eastward through the continent, facial expressions tend to grow more sober and the tendency toward small talk fades. Not that these peoples are more unhappy, but there is generally less inclination to idly chat or joke around.
The author offers numerous observations, interpretations, and interviews regarding local perspectives on 'happiness' during his travels. An insightful read that doesn't take itself too seriously.
Might explain why I got along so well with my old German neighbors.