Marianne LaFrance

This book was both interesting and informative.

As Freud saw it, therapy was deemed successful when neurotic misery had been converted into ordinary unhappiness. (Page 69)

Mark Granovetter called some of these skin deep interactions weak ties and argues that they do important social work. (Page 71)

"There are few domains where the act of smiling is more volitional, less spontaneous and more premeditated than in political campaingns - except maybe in sales and megachurches. (Page 125)

"Curious about what most people think is charismatic, political psychologists have looked to biographies, letters, and diaries for indicators. Three telltale traits recur over and over: high energy; social assertiveness; and an intense interest in power. In business contexts, charisma tends to take a more pragmatic form; charismatic executives perform well in front of large audiences, grasp situations easily, and recognize members' needs." (Page 128)

"For the social psychologist Howard Friedman, one quality [of] charismatic leaders [is] emotional eloquence. ... Friedman found ... that charismatic people ar extroverted, exhibitionistic, and relish power ... High ... scorers know how to use their face to touch others' emotional buttons." (Page 129)

"Political commentator Joe McGinniss put it rather starkly by noting that on television a candidate does not need ideas for 'style to become substance.'" (Page 130)

"In the 1960s, Marshal McLuhan predicted that politics would be replaced by imagery since the image would become more powerful than a politician could ever be. We are not to far from that now, when many citizens are better acquainted with visual images of politicians than they are with particulars of their policies. (Page 131)

And on the opposite side: "Appearances to the contrary, presidents displayed facial expressions besides smiling. Anger expressed by lowered brows and fixed gaze is sometimes useful. ... several studies show that participants often concede more to negotiators who are angry than to those who are happy. When confronted with an angry opponent, they tend to believe the other is not going to budge, and so make relatively large concessions." (Page 134)

A theme oft repeated in the book: "People smile when they are happy, but they also smile when they are not happy." (Page 148) And the book elaborates on when various kinds of smiles are used. "If one has good reasons for putting in the effort [to smile when not happy], the outcome can be satisfying; if not, then there is a psychological price to be paid. There also may be a wide social toll when human smiles are turned into commodities to be traded for profit." (Page 149) "The advice to supply service with a smile is found everywhere," (Page 150) And not just the United States, for example: "In China, failure to smile could even get you arrested - or it did for shopkeepers during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing." (Page 151)

There is a cost to all that smiling. "Service employees under the gun to smile often report that they cease to feel much of anything on or off the job. ... For service providers, real feelings disappear:" (Page 159) "The context of a smile provides important cluses as to whether it is genuinely felt or a superb forgery." (Page 164, ending the chapter "Service with a Smile")

Next the chapter: "Real Men Don't Smile": "In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, one character advises another that a woman would do better to show more affection than she feels. Boys get the opposite advice. By the time they turn ten, boys in the United States are already practicing 'cool'" (Page 175)

"Psychologist now agree that gender is a complex construct, made up of at least three dimensons: sex in the biological sense; sexual orientation in terms of the sex of preferred sexual partners; and gender identity in the psychological sense." (Page 180)

"The fact that occupations slated for women have low pay and a high cheeriness component has not gone entirely unnoticed, and therein lays some contentious research." "Physicians have been advised to smile more with patients, but for some reason it is not enthusiastically endorsed by the doctors themselves. This may be because smiling is so tightly bound up with notions of femininity and femininity so tightly bound to inferiority, that the idea of smiling makes doctors feel like they are diminishing their own power." (Page 185)

There is a lot of material in the chapter Smiles with a Foreign Accent. There are fast differences between when it is appropriate to smile and inappropriate depending on the country. It is interesting that babies could recognize when a different language was being spoken just by the facial expression, and that "Americans are able to correctly spot who is American and who is Australian with nothing more than a photo of a smiling face." (Page 201)

Sculptures of Buddha ... "Humans, like deities, change when they cross borders - their smiles are often reshaped as the acquire the communication habits of the locals." (Page 203)

The chapter "Smiles with a Foreign Accent" winds up with "Culture is more than rites and rituals, food and fashion - more than established ways of doing things. It is an encompassing mind-set and a useful face-set. Facial expressions and the consequences that flow from the help define how people are to relate to one another." (Page 216)

"Psychologists believe that picture taking does much more than ... just capture events, they construct events. Picture taking does not merely set memory; it resets it again and again. (Page 222)

Chapter "Exit Smiling" "Who would have thought that something as friendly and familiar as a smile could turn out to be so complex and essential." ... "What I hope is now clear is that not all smiles are like rays of sunshine. Smiles are often great disguises - ... " (Page 239)… (plus d'informations)