A fake smile could have notable impact on a person's happiness, and a new study has revealed when it has a positive and negative effect. The popular adage "fake it 'till you make it" has been proven to be effective—people who put a smile on their face even if it doesn't come naturally, do report feeling happier. However, the outcome has been found to be notably different when people are told or forced to smile repeatedly by someone else.
Researchers found that when people are instructed to smile—and when they face financial pressure to do so—they report feeling much less happy and instead, more angry. The study lead, Nicholas Coles, a professor of psychology at the University of Florida, was inspired to investigate the difference further because of his personal experience in customer service. When he first started studying psychology, Coles worked at a theme park in Florida, and he told Newsweek that part of his job was to "force a smile" for every customer, no matter how they were speaking to him.
He recalled how one time he was "screamed at in front of hundreds of people," but had to keep the smile on his face and maintain the expression for the tens of thousands of other people he greeted at the theme park that day. "I ultimately failed, gave up on forcing smiles for a living, and set out to study them instead," he said. Coles' previous work in the field showed that "people can indeed fake it till they make it," he said, explaining that "when people pose a smile in a scenario that doesn’t feel forced or terribly inauthentic, we find overwhelming evidence that they report being happier." He added that "we even found this to be the case among people who didn’t believe that smiles would make them feel happier, which I believe highlights how robust the effect can be." However, his new study shows that the effect can also be reversed.
The study was published online on October 1, and will be in the January 2027 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The researchers included around 1,200 participants for the online experiment. The participants were first shown a series of pictures, with either happy connotations like ones of kittens and flowers, or unhappy connotations, like images of animal mistreatment or theft.
The participants were asked to either fake a smile in response to each image or told to respond naturally. Those told to fake their smiles were also warned they could lose $2 of their $6 payment if they failed to follow instructions (everyone got their full payment at the end). After each round, participants rated their happiness, and the findings revealed that one faked smile had a positive impact on happiness, though when the expression was repeatedly faked, any positive feeling quickly diminished.
This was even the case for the happier images. Ultimately, the researchers found that participants' happiness took a hit when they were "forced to smile in scenarios that better resemble my own experience working in customer service," Coles said. "When forced to smile repeatedly with financial threats, posed smiles tended to lower feelings of happiness and increase feelings of anger." Smiling under the "fake it 'till you make it" mindset suggests a person has emotional autonomy.
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