Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can smiling make you happier?

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 62 posts

Re: Can smiling make you happier?

#51

Post by Dylan16807 »

cairo_x wrote: post #37
yamike wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeling slightly happy is better than being totally depressed.

By depression, I assume you mean sadness? Existential angst? Because if someone found smiling could curtail depression I'm sure they'd win the Nobel prize. I thing it's evident that smiling can make a ratty external situation more humorous, but for internal darkness it's like bottling things up, which I'm surprised psychologists might have thought to be a good idea.

> if someone found smiling could curtail depression I'm sure they'd win the Nobel prize.

You're reading way too far into that. If something brings you from -100 to -95 it's notable but not world-changing. yamike didn't say anything about actually fixing the depression, just adding a slight bit of happiness.

> I think it's evident

Are you basing that on anything? There's a reason we're actually doing this study and not just reasoning out the answer.

Re: Can smiling make you happier?

#52

Post by Broken_Hippo »

paganel wrote: post #43
rezashirazian wrote: post #13

Having to fake a smile to feel slightly happy is fairly depressing to me.

And to a lot of us who live in Europe. Was reading a thread on reddit the other day about how people in the States actually tell you to smile, even though they're total strangers to you. What if just someone close to you just passed away? What if you've just been fired and don't have money for rent or for your parents' medication?

None of that matters, honestly. The expectation is more that you go out of the house with a happy face. If you work at a store or in other customer service fields, it isn't enough to be nice and polite, you need to smile as well. I worked in a call center and we got told that we should smile while on the phone, even.

And sometimes, the order to smile is some odd sort of thing men do to women, especially older men to younger women.

All of it becomes habit.

Re: Can smiling make you happier?

#53

Post by dkersten »

galaxia2 wrote: post #45
Dylan16807 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you expect that X will make you happy, and do X, most people will report being happier for a while. That's true no matter what X is. It could even be frowning, let's say "to use up the negative emotions" or whatever. That by itself is not evidence that X does anything.

I understand where you're coming from. It's a form of confirmation bias. But for me as long as it works for me I'm fine with it. Scientific results be damned. Science serves man, not the other way around.

The placebo effect is a real thing that actually has benefits. In this particular case, even if smiling is purely placebo, all is well because a smile is free (of charge and of adverse side effects).

But in the case of many medicines, just because magic-miracle-pill-x "works for you" doesn't really mean its a good idea if it actually only works due to placebo: maybe its really expensive (for something that may as well be just sugar) or maybe there is actual medication that is much more effective or maybe its safety hasn't been fully studied as is the case with much alternative medicine.

In any case, Hitchens's razor applies:

    What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Re: Can smiling make you happier?

#54

Post by dkersten »

cairo_x wrote: post #37
yamike wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeling slightly happy is better than being totally depressed.

By depression, I assume you mean sadness? Existential angst? Because if someone found smiling could curtail depression I'm sure they'd win the Nobel prize. I thing it's evident that smiling can make a ratty external situation more humorous, but for internal darkness it's like bottling things up, which I'm surprised psychologists might have thought to be a good idea.

Yep. In my experience, external factors such as smiling, laughing, joking and being active are completely disconnected from and have no bearing on someones internal emotional state when depressed.

That is, in my personal experience and in my experience knowing others who have suffered from depression, you can feel completely down and hopeless and emotionally distraught without this being visible to those around you, who simply see you being active, acting happy, smiling, joking and so on. These things do not mean that you aren't depressed. The thing that makes depression what it is, is the feeling of hopelessness and/or emptiness even when these other things are present and even when there's seemingly no reason for it.

Many depressed people get very good at bottling up and hiding their emotions.

Re: Can smiling make you happier?

#55

Post by sctb »

jdimov10 wrote: post #47

Just about everyone on HN seems permanently depressed. The HN crowd can not be bothered to smile because they're too busy moaning about "social injustice". I keep trying to push myself extra hard to only read the headlines and never click on the comments...

Please don't make unfair generalizations about the HN community. The "crowd" includes you, and we ask that you comment substantively just as we do of everyone else.

Re: Can smiling make you happier?

#56

Post by cairo_x »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #51
cairo_x wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By depression, I assume you mean sadness? Existential angst? Because if someone found smiling could curtail depression I'm sure they'd win the Nobel prize. I thing it's evident that smiling can make a ratty external situation more humorous, but for internal darkness it's like bottling things up, which I'm surprised psychologists might have thought to be a good idea.

> if someone found smiling could curtail depression I'm sure they'd win the Nobel prize. You're reading way too far into that. If something brings you from -100 to -95 it's notable but not world-changing. yamike didn't say anything about actually fixing the depression, just adding a slight bit of happiness. > I think it's evident Are you basing that on anything? There's a reason we're actually doing this study and no…

You don't think it's evident people smile to make others feel more comfortable? (Sounds like a question in an Autism checklist)

And on the other side of the coin: You don't find it rather ironic that you discount experiential self-reporting in this thread, yet psychology relies on it so heavily?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_inventory#Problems

Re: Can smiling make you happier?

#57

Post by Dylan16807 »

cairo_x wrote: post #56
Dylan16807 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if someone found smiling could curtail depression I'm sure they'd win the Nobel prize. You're reading way too far into that. If something brings you from -100 to -95 it's notable but not world-changing. yamike didn't say anything about actually fixing the depression, just adding a slight bit of happiness. > I think it's evident Are you basing that on anything? There's a reason we're actually doing this study and no…

You don't think it's evident people smile to make others feel more comfortable? (Sounds like a question in an Autism checklist) And on the other side of the coin: You don't find it rather ironic that you discount experiential self-reporting in this thread, yet psychology relies on it so heavily? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_inventory#Problems

>You don't think it's evident people smile to make others feel more comfortable? (Sounds like a question in an Autism checklist)

That is not what the post I replied to said, and I especially want a citation for the "bottling things up" portion.

>You don't find it rather ironic that you discount experiential self-reporting in this thread, yet psychology relies on it so heavily?

I don't see any irony once we remove the oversimplifications. It's a terrible data source so we need a whole lot of data points and careful collection to get anything meaningful. We can still use it, but we very much need to discount single anecdotes and going by what's 'evident' without checking.

Re: Can smiling make you happier?

#59

Post by cairo_x »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #57
cairo_x wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think it's evident people smile to make others feel more comfortable? (Sounds like a question in an Autism checklist) And on the other side of the coin: You don't find it rather ironic that you discount experiential self-reporting in this thread, yet psychology relies on it so heavily? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_inventory#Problems

>You don't think it's evident people smile to make others feel more comfortable? (Sounds like a question in an Autism checklist) That is not what the post I replied to said, and I especially want a citation for the "bottling things up" portion. >You don't find it rather ironic that you discount experiential self-reporting in this thread, yet psychology relies on it so heavily? I don't see any irony once we remove the…

Bottling things up, with regards to depression -- pretending to be what you are not -- is exhausting. If you don't have depression exhaustion can be overcome. A big part of depression is the inability to recover from stress, therefore pretending to smile, over time, would be obviously detrimental to depression. I know this from experience.

The studies on depression and stress are many and numerous, although they are neuroscientific in nature (actual science).

No offence dude, but the field of psychology is to neuroscience as alchemy is to chemistry and physics. Welcome to the twenty-first century.

PS: Psychology has done a pretty good job of getting depression wrong at every possible turn. And people like me have been the butt of their half-baked ideas since the beginning. gives psychology the middle finger

Post reply on HN