A fascinating new study reveals that different cultures view smiles differently. Be careful to not smile in Russia as you will be viewed as a village idiot.

Smiles are highly diverse in their types and in their possible meanings. They are used to communicate a range of different psychological signals, including positive emotions, social intentions, or a person’s social status (Matsumoto and Willingham 2009). Past research has offered a number of distinctions among smiles. The utility of one of the most popular distinctions, viz. Duchenne versus non-Duchenne smiles (Duchenne1862), has been recently questioned because there is evidence that the use of the Duchenne marker of a ‘true’ smile is not universal, but rather limited to certain cultures (Abe et al. 2002; Thibault et al. 2012). In their simulation of smiles model, Niedenthal et nl. (2010) focus on the perception of smiles and suggest that the distinction between Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles may be largely superseded by a distinction based on the functions of smiles, which may be derived from (and mapped onto) identifiable brain systems that represent different meanings of smiling.

There is also a direct correlation between countries high in corruption and general view of the smiles.