Health · Medical Research · 6 hrs ago
Repeated or pressured smiling can reduce happiness, study finds
A single posed smile may modestly improve happiness, but repeating it or feeling forced to smile can have the opposite effect.
University of Florida psychology professor Nicholas Coles and colleagues tested this in an online experiment analysed with 1,174 participants.
People viewed pleasant or unpleasant images and were told either to smile or respond naturally, doing the task once or 10 times.
For people viewing unpleasant images, one posed smile slightly increased happiness, but repetition weakened that benefit and financial pressure combined with repetition removed it.
For people viewing pleasant images, repetition or threatened financial penalties reduced happiness compared with responding naturally, and forced smiling also tended to increase irritation and anger.
Everyone received the full payment, and the findings suggest that the effects of smiling depend on pressure and repetition, rather than smiling always improving mood.
A study found that repeated or financially pressured smiling can reduce happiness in some circumstances.
A single posed smile modestly improved happiness among participants who viewed unpleasant images.
The benefit weakened with repetition and disappeared when repetition was combined with financial pressure.
Among participants viewing pleasant images, repeated smiling or the threat of a financial penalty reduced happiness compared with responding naturally.
The researchers analyzed responses from 1,174 people in an online experiment.
- Who
- Researchers including Nicholas Coles, Annabel Dang and Joao Francisco Goes Braga Takayanagi conducted the study.
- What
- The study examined how posed smiling, repetition and financial pressure affected participants’ happiness.
- When
- The findings were published October 1; the article was published November 9, 2026.
- Where
- The experiment was conducted online.
- Why
- Researchers wanted to test whether the effects of smiling changed when it was repeated or done under pressure.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
The researchers’ findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
SciTechDaily published its article about the study.
- Participants recruited
- 1,201 people
- Participants analyzed
- 1,174 people
- Repeated smiling condition
- Participants completed the exercise 10 times
- Potential financial penalty
- $2 of a $6 payment
- Final payment
- All participants received the full amount
What people are saying
I used to work in customer service. I actually got written up for my inability to keep smiling at work at an unnamed theme park in Florida,
We tried to combine the classic way of studying it in a lab with some extra ingredients that we might see in the real world. We told participants that we would pay them less if they weren’t successfully smiling,
If you only force a smile once without any financial penalties, you can see the improvement in happiness. So what psychologists were seeing in their lab is right,