20+ Powerful Photos Showing How a Smile Can Change a Human's Face

[pnwmom]

9. In some cultures they don't smile nearly as much as Americans do. So it isn't as universal

as we tend to think.

My son had a preschool teacher from S. America who seemed unfriendly because she rarely smiled. But it turned out to be a cultural difference. And it isn't only her country where people don't smile at strangers.

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/culture-and-smiling/483827/

To test this theory, Krys had thousands of people in 44 different countries judge a series of eight smiling and non-smiling faces on a scale of honesty and intelligence. He compared their answers to the country’s 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 significantly more intelligent than non-smiling people. But in Japan, India, Iran, South Korea, and—you guessed it—Russia, the smiling faces were considered significantly 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.