Smiling your way to happiness or misery? Experimental tests of competing perspectives [Registered Report - stage II]

Researchers and lay people alike have long been interested in whether people can make themselves feel happier if they simply fake a smile. Thus far, two largely disconnected research communities have provided seemingly competing answers to this question, with (a) emotion embodiment researchers observing positive causal links in experimental contexts, and (b) emotion labor researchers observing negative associations in real-world work contexts. In the present work, we conducted a pre-registered conceptual extension of the largest experimental demonstration of the positive effects of posed smiles on mood, focusing on three factors that may explain why such effects fail to generalize to real-world work contexts. More specifically, we tested whether posed smiles fail to improve mood (1) in negative contexts, (2) when performed repeatedly, and/or (3) when performed to avoid punishment. Ultimately, results did not support any one hypothesis. In negative contexts, participants reported higher levels of happiness after posing a single smile (vs. expressing themselves naturally). However, such effects were (a) diminished when posing smiles repeatedly and (b) virtually nil with the additional threat of punishment. Furthermore, in positive contexts, posing smiles repeatedly or under the threat of punishment led to lower self-reported happiness. Taken together, results suggest that posed smiles can be mood-boosting in some contexts and mood-dampening in others — a potential source of both happiness and misery.