Plenty of contribution already,so I'll just add a personal anecdote. Some years ago I happened to have some beers with a Latvian Russian,who lived here, in London. He tells us that he doesn't get the Brits. He just doesn't understand the reasoning in some situations. I ask to elaborate. He says: last year, I had a pretty serious trauma and ended up in a hospital. It's so bad, pain, lots of tests,etc. And I'm pretty fed up with all of it. Then, one day, a surgeon comes in, says hello and asks me 'how are you?'. And I reply: 'really bad!'. And suddenly surgeon's face changes: his eyes start moving faster,he looks at me and then observes the room,then at me again. Then the surgeon,in a slightly panicky voice ask me again: well what's wrong,is it the food? Is it the nurses? Did they do all the tests? What's going on?' Then the Russian looks at the doctor and says: well look, I'm in a hospital, I'm ill as hell, I'm in pain and you have the audacity to ask how am I? Are you crazy? It should be pretty clear that it's definitely not my day! The surgeon goes on to explain the subtleties of the question and etc. At that point I already lived in the UK long enough to understand the doctor's position but I also found the Russians point to be absolutely hilarious.
From personal experience I find the Russians absolutely hilarious even without much smiling (the young ones smile more).They are somehow similar to Italians,who are also hilarious, but as is the case with the Russians, the funniest things tend to be equally tragic too. Kind of a never ending tragicomedy on full blast.
I am Ukrainian. Came to the US when I was 14. I may never be cool like all the hard looking dudes in movies and whatnot but I smile all the time because either I find something funny in what I’m engaged in or if I don’t that I try to think of it as such. I have always been this way and I can’t imagine not doing it.
Also, I have read a few comments in this discussion about how fake American smiles and “how are you?”s are and I have to disagree somewhat. To a large extent Americans use “how are you” and “what’s up” as generic greetings but at the same time you can often tell when someone is using it instead of “hello” vs having 30-120 seconds to chat pretty easily. If my day is going well I make a point of telling the random person I’m interacting with why that is: “I’m doing great. The weather is so nice and I had a lovely cup of coffee on my back porch today.” Quick interaction, mostly meaningless, but to me it’s a nice way to break up the monotony. On the other hand if I’m having a bad day I don’t feel like hiding it but the trick is to not make it the other person’s problem: “I’m getting by. I blew a tire on the way to work and I just had all four tires replaced. But oh well, that’s just how irony works I guess.” Again, quick and simple and not the typical “fine” response. At worst they go “oh that sucks. Paper or plastic?” but more often it could result in a short conversation and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
Quite a lot of US culture can come off as phony to (Eastern) Europeans. Friend of mine went to the US for a business schooling event and said people were completely incapable of honest criticism. They would sugar coat criticism under 10 layers of phony praise. He was the only one who actually said something was bad outright, if someone gave a bad presentation. He attributed it to cultural difference. Guess it is related to what Americans think is friendly / unfriendly behavior.
It's tough to navigate Americans. They're super friendly, but often I feel like it's their version of "being polite" and not more.
Just yesterday I read https://idlewords.com/2018/12/gluten_free_antarctica.htm which is pretty amusing, and I recommend reading. Quoting the most relevant (to this discussion) part from it:
> “Can I ask you something? How come the Russians never smile? I’ve never seen them smiling.”
> “They’re at work. They're Russians.”
> "Is it normal for them to eat without talking to one another?”
> “This is their job. They get 20 minutes to eat.”
> “Yeah, but they never smile. Are they happy?”
> Are the Russians happy? Is anyone happy? Can one ever truly be said to be happy?
> I am tempted to go full Slav on Conor, to explain to him how we are all just grains of dust suspended in the howling void, searching for meaning in the fleeting moments before we are yanked back to the oblivion from whence we emerged, naked and screaming. But for all his faults he's just a kid stuck spending his summer microwaving Yorkshire puddings for difficult people. I take pity.
> “Russians are formal. It would be weird of them to act relaxed on duty. They are all smiling on the inside.”
Austrian here, we are somewhat in between Russians and Americans, when it comes to smiling. But what I can tell you is that life is just so much better when people smile at you, even if it might not be a hundred percent genuine. My comparison stems from having worked with both Russians and Americans. Being around grumpy Russians all day long makes live really miserable.
There's actually a regional difference. Growing up on the east coast in New York people rarely smiled at each other on the street. Someone you didn't know smiling at you could mean a crazy person, or some sort of con artist trying to suck you into interacting with them.
Living on the west coast for the last twenty years, the situation is totally different. On a bike trail, on the sidewalk, people often smile and nod at each other. At first it was very off-putting and I found it hard to reciprocate. Over the years I've forced myself to do it so as not to seem unfriendly, but it's been a bit of a chore. That natural paranoia I feel, suspicion about people's motives, is something I grew up with and I don't think I'll ever be able to put it down completely.
Some past related threads:
What a Russian Smile Means - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17445108 - July 2018 (67 comments)
What a Russian Smile Means - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17381975 - June 2018 (1 comment)
What a Russian Smile Means - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17376212 - June 2018 (1 comment)
Do Russians smile at each other? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491944 - March 2014 (1 comment)
Why do Russians smile so little (and Americans so much?) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2375633 - March 2011 (105 comments)
Pretty sure there have been others. Anybody?
This is such a great article imo that really captures fundamental societal and cultural differences. I would say that Sweden has a similar 'grave' approach to life and that smiling is reserved for funny situations.
Much as I love the US 'etiquette smile' when passing people in the street and meeting, social pressure to conform can mask stress, anxiety and solemnity. The English used to feel pretty uncomfortable about yanks grinning away at everything but they seem to have partially become Americanized in this regard. (I'm English originally but have lived in the US for decades).
Another thing I've noticed uniquely with some Russian colleagues, and I've never quite known the meaning of, but I assume is Russian cultural attribute, is silence. A few times I've e.g. been explaining something to a Russian colleague, I'll go on and on, and when I'm done ... nothing. This always gets me anxious. What does it mean? Does the person think it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard? Did the person not understand what I said? Does the person need more time to think about it? Does the person not realize I'm finished? What is expected of the speaker in this scenario? Do I just wait? Do I prod? Do I explain it again? Do I leave? Is there some microexpression I should be looking for to differentiate? Or is this not actually a Russian thing and just an anomaly?
I wonder if any Russians can weigh in if this still feels accurate. I'm familiar with Polish Culture, which is less fun, frivolous, and happy than American culture, but a smile is certainly not an attack, just reserved for genuine occasions. Service people are in no way expected to smile unless there is some honest reason to.
This the perfect opportunity to suggest a relevant book: "The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia" by Michael Booth. He's a Brit who married a Dane, relocated to Denmark, and was struck by the cultural differences between Scandinavian cultures and his own. So he wrote a book.
In it, he observes that smiles and jokes and easy conversation are more common among Brits and Americans than many Europeans, and suggests that, as you proceed northward and eastward through the continent, facial expressions tend to grow more sober and the tendency toward small talk fades. Not that these peoples are more unhappy, but there is generally less inclination to idly chat or joke around.
The author offers numerous observations, interpretations, and interviews regarding local perspectives on 'happiness' during his travels. An insightful read that doesn't take itself too seriously.
I've noticed most Russians I work with also speak slowly. I'm curious whether it is difficulty with English pronunciation or whether speaking slowly is part of Russian culture. I'm guessing more the latter, as the the things they say are also frequently quite concise and to the point, no filler words, few adverbs, so no need to speak quickly. Do Russians speak more quickly when speaking Russian?
I'm an American, but I don't smile by showing my teeth, though I will sometimes do a closed lip smile. For me I don't think it is cultural, but rather that smiling always feels to me like baring my teeth, i.e. aggressive and threatening. I don't honestly know why I feel that way, I don't have any history or experiences that would seem to cause that, but it just feels wrong to do. I've always wondered if there are other people have the same reaction?
Note: I don't see other people's smiles as threatening, it just feels that way when I do it.
In this mini-ethnography I present the main differences in perception of the smile in Russia and in the United States.
There are regional variations in the United States. In New England, NY and other parts of the Northeast, we are often quite serious/stone-faced in public, something that I have heard outsiders from the west coast and South observe. I also was struck by the demeanor of some friends from Brazil who always have a smile on their face, and seem to be more happy and upbeat even when things are not going well.
There was related discussion on HN about smiling and laughter that's worth reading:
From apes to birds, animal species that “laugh” (arstechnica.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27193602
Observation from a Scottish perspective: We are somewhere in between the two modes. We smile more than Russians (not difficult) and less than Americans (also not difficult), and we notice both quite clearly. I would say we used to be more like the Russians (hence why Scottish people used to often be considered "dour" or depressed), but are now being Americanised through media consumption (like many countries). That is noticeable in that younger generations smile more than older ones.
My personal take on smiles is that they're welcome if genuine, but can have adverse effects when forced. Many people think that displaying a fake smile for example at the workplace would help with interactions, especially professional ones, but rest assured that when I see someone faking a smile, particularly those working hard to look warm and sincere, I immediately feel I could be manipulated and get on the defensive. ...But I speak from personal experience of being shown daily the widest warm smile at the workplace from the same person that a few months later would dig my professional grave, so your mileage will probably vary.
Although the author attributes the lack of smiling to Russians, I would suggest this generalization should extend to continental Europe. For instance, there is a related saying describing differences between Brits and Germans - "Too polite to be honest and too honest to be polite". It captures the idea that in Anglo Saxonian culture, it is more important to be polite.
I'm living in Ireland, and this bit around non-honest smiling just drives me nuts sometimes. Otherwise, it is excellent when you're going for a walk because it creates a positive and inviting atmosphere. But adapting to a constantly cheerful and smiling surrounding was not without a challenge. Do I smile and say hi all the time to every person, or are there exceptions? There is a bit of a learning curve as after 50 smiles and hi's every day, I feel exhausted, LOL.
I've heard different explanations.
Someone told me if someone is smiling to you in Russia, they are probably scamming you.
A smile given away too freely for no reason can be perceived as fake and suspicious.
Lith here. One of the most embarrassing things that I've done in my life was first day of induction in my UK university. The lecture was about cultural differences. We were assigned into groups and asked to list couple of stereotypes that we know. I didn't realised we were supposed to say something like "Americans are hard working and Brits are punctual". Instead I've bombasted to 200-something students that Asian people smell.
I genuinely love the narrative style of this article: every situation is described matter-of-factly, without artifice - unsmiling, in fact.
It’s a perfect vehicle for its message.
I've worked with several Russians and I noticed that they type the smile emoticon without the colon... So instead of :) it's just ). For laughing it's )))))))
What's up with that? )
The thing that struck me most about this article was the frequent east/west framing. Is that common outside of the US?
I’ve noticed in Ukraine this “no smiling” thing is going away. Young people smile almost like Americans.
I have a SO in Singapore. Once we were at a (sort of chic actually) cafe and the cashier made eye contact without a smile and said, "ah what you want" and I was instinctively taken aback. It's amusing because I have since figured out that people in sg just act differently, I mean by that point me and her had been dating for years and I've learned that in general Asian cultures tend to be more reserved (in certain respects, they are less reserved in ways Americans aren't, my father in-law tells me straight up when he sees me that I've gotten fatter). That said, it felt odd to be in a situation here where in the US I usually have to shake off the constant pan-american smiles and chiming in to see how the food is etc, etc. I usually rather people back off a little or chill out at least and yet because it's so ingrained in my head that a situation where I actually got customer service that is brutally efficient, my first instinct is to think they didn't like me.
Look at old photos - people never smiled, because you were considered to be stupid. Smiling all the time is pretty boring and I'd rather see real emotions than faked smiles. The hypothesis of positivity is crashing left and right anyway. Positive people live shorter lifespans, too - quite the opposite of what they tell you.
I'm curious, how do Russians determine someone is in a bad mood from body/face language? In the US I can tell when my colleagues aren't happy the moment they walk in the room by their face. In Russia, do they have to speak in order for you to determine this or is there some other cue? Maybe if they smile?
Changed a little bit since that time. Mostly in cities, now we are smiling when meet with people we know well. This allows me to trick the system sometimes, every time I need something from government structure Im smiling there like an idiot, that cause unknown people to think that they know me and then help.
The other part of this is that smiling when you don’t really want to, at people you don’t really like, as part of your job, is really exhausting. In the United States labor and especially service sector labor is very disempowered so they don’t really have the option to refuse to smile. In places where labor has a bit more leverage they might be able to. There’s also a special voice you put on, the customer service voice. Culture is often downstream from material conditions.
The different usage and meaning of eye contact is a minefield a bit like this.
Russian here.
The fact is that russian life is really miserable (just imagine living for 100 years in hardcore totalitarian communism, still in progress with different labels).
There’s really not that many reasons to smile while you grow up & live in Russia.
And you don’t even have a strong quality spiritual platform (like some asian countries) or good climate (like some aftican countries) to compensate.
You don’t waste your attention span on smiling etc - you’re busy surviving and fighting for the best spot in pyramid.
If you smile too much — it could even cause jealousy and you win more enemies or people might consider your positive attitude a sign of softness and take advantage of you.
It’s also suspicious to see someone smiling a lot - its harder to read his underlying subtle motivations & values.
And russians don’t have much time to make friends - the sooner and better you identify like minded people the easier for you as a group to survive.
That’s why russian tend to smile only in a close group of friends or when something really funny is going on.
I had the same impression traveling to Bolivia. I am Brazilian and we generally smile when speaking with someone. But in La Paz people usually had this serious look on their faces and a kind of difficult to approach semblance. I imagined poverty could explain that, but Brazil is a bit poorer than Russia. Maybe instead of poverty, we could think about hardship in a more general sense? I find very hard to believe that considering someone smiling insulting is a healthy outcome of a culture.
But really, why do Americans smile?
I've seen this topic a few times. As an American, the only time I've had a jarring experience with fake smiles is when I visited the Japan section of Disney's Epcot. It was a really bizarre experience watching the cashiers be overly cheerful. I've never been to Japan so I don't know if it's normal behavior or more of a performance for tourists.
I have just browsed much of Adventures in the Atomic Age: From Watts to Washington by Glenn Seaborg, a Nobelist in Chemistry. He quoted in passing Tom Landry's dictum that "You can't think and smile at the same time.", but in the context of saying that some can: Enrico Fermi was always smiling, and always thinking.
I find people in cultures that are not constantly smiling and saying over-the-too cheerful things to have a higher dynamic range of displayed emotion.
When everything is "awesome" and "amazing" and worthy of a grin, then nothing is.
Despite being born and raised in the midwest US, I get along better with slavic people than most from the west coast.
I'm really late to the party, but here goes anyway.
Some context is due. The article is almost twenty years old. The experiences described there are from a time period when Latvia had gained independence from the Soviet Union only some ten years prior. So, pretty much all the people working in the hospitality industry would be someone whose formative years and/or young adulthood was spent during the nineties.
That was a pretty brutal decade. Rearranging from planned to market economy is hard. Economic crises abound, rampant organized crime, generally high levels of aggression. I come from a small town and I was a kid then, but even then I know of four murders that happened then in my home town. A guy was beaten to death in a nightclub, another guy was thrown from a bridge, my favorite sales clerk at a local store got incarcerated for axe-murdering his wife and her lover, and a body was found in the bushes behind my music school. Ah right, there was also the case of a neighbor massacring a family on a potato field. A friend who lived in Riga during that time told me how his dad always had a peace of metal pipe behind the door. Just in case. In a later interview the guy who was chief of police then revealed how he slept with body armor on at all times.
So, people who were teenagers or young adults then learned to not smile for the same reasons the prison population is not really a cheerful bunch. It's outright dangerous. There's a book and a recently made movie about coming of age as a metalhead in a mid-sized Latvian town during the nineties called Jelgava 94 (Doom 94). It really conveys the look and feel of those times quite well.
It's very different now. Sure, people don't smile as much as Americans (no one except Thais does), and are not as chatty as the Brits. But a lot of people have worked or traveled abroad, have seen and gotten accustomed to different cultures. According to my experience pretty much everyone below the age of 25 speak fluent English. And hug. They hug a lot. And yeah, the crime levels are nowhere near to how it was in the nineties.
It's a lot easier, Russian popular culture is formed by gulags, because a good third of adult men had gulag experience at some point and it was their main life-shaping experience (usually resulting in their rise in social hierarchy too). And in gulag, a smile is a sign of submission.
> For Russians happiness and prosperity are not associated with the smile
This is a very questionable claim. I think such association is true for humans in general and even for some mammals.
Their culture just discourages happiness. Look at the Russian literature - that's an ocean of suffering.
It’s funny, I never noticed this. I grew up in Germany and had lived in the US for a year a while back. A few years after I met an American friend here who had been on a euro trip. She went to Prague (not exactly Russia, but culturally close enough I guess) and she said something like: "why are all people there so damn depressed?" I myself had great times in that same city, I never got that feeling. But I realized that there is a big cultural difference. I told her: "That’s how they are. They are still happy and loving people, they just show it differently".
I would never perceive them as being depressed. Interesting how your surrounding culture can change your perception of things.
A while back I flew to Moscow as a consultant to do a 1 day workshop. All went fine. The only thing that irritated the hell out of me was that no one laughed at any of my jokes. Not even smiled. I thought it was the translator.
With masks being socially acceptable in most if not all the world now, I wonder if the lack of visible smile that causes will change the perception of a smile in places where people usually smile by default.
A friend of mine who had lived in the USA long enough to pick up some local traits had to go back to Russia to renew his expiring documents. One required a fresh photo to be taken. The guy who was readily available next door for the occasion felt a bit uneasy about doing his job. After several discarded takes he finally figured it out: "Stop stretching your lips!".
[-1] Not the right time to smile https://www.svoboda.org/a/28088763.html
What we call "culture" is often collective trauma, it is history. To be left behind. We are all humans, dysfunctional in different ways we call "culture".... until one can hope, someday the fish sees the water.
There is strictly no sane reason why a human being should withdraw a smile or any kind of positive emotion or spontaneous expression so long as they are emotionally healthy.
At same time the need for boundaries in our relationships (professional , intimate etc.) is universal, not cultural.
Because they have too much piano and not enough slide whistle. https://youtu.be/EyofqsBQS5I
> It is even worse if the person smiles showing his/her teeth. In the animal world bare teeth are considered to be a threat. Hence I think there is some instinctive fear of bare teeth built into our social perception system.
I would love to hear from an evolutionary psychologist if this really is a thing in people. I remember being pretty astounded to learn that smiling monkeys are dangerous; there's no part of my consciousness that thinks of a toothy smile as dangerous.
I really liked book by Erin Meyer "The Culture Map" it gives a lot more insight into those kind of things. She is American that moved to France and was working with multicultural teams.
"Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd."
In the US smiling wasn't as prevalent, at least in photographs. Look at any Civil War era picture and nobody is smiling in their portraits. I'm not sure when that started. I read somewhere that back then people thought people who smiled all the time were "simple minded." Now I can't help thinking that every time I see some marketing copy with some model smiling while playing with soap or something.
Russians live in harsh climate, so they have to conserve energy more. Smile has been proven to employ a lot of muscles and thus spend a lot of energy.
"But in the majority of life situations, like business or political meetings, there is no humor at all"
That's your problem right there
"In the animal world bare teeth are considered to be a threat. Hence I think there is some instinctive fear of bare teeth built into our social perception system."
Except a human smile is more akin to a canine's greeting/appeasement grin. And much more so like a Chimp's play grin. There are toothy displays in mammals that are not threatening.
So Russians are exactly like Norwegians in this regard, must be why we get along so well. That and our dark if not often black taste in humour.
I know many Norwegians considers a laughing, smiling idiot just that, an idiot. Unintelligent. Either that or the person smiling and laughing all the time for no apparent reason must be very insecure, or just weird.
Wow, what an interesting and insightful article! I've worked with many Russians and enjoyed working with them immensely, but I did notice they seemed very stern or serious as well. The difference in culture of smiling is very interesting, this is definitely something to understand going forward when I work with other Russians.
Headline: Why Russians do not smile
Article: Russians do smile
It looks like they smile more now than in the past. Maybe the quality of life gotten better and they smile more?
Many years ago I lived in a sort of dormitory in Tokyo. The Americans and Japanese residents understood each other's personal space preferences just fine, but it was amusing to note the look on some of the Japanese people's faces when the Italians greeted them with hugs and kisses.
Leaving aside cultural differences, isn't it a fact that smiles (genuine smiles) have health benefits?
Russians do smile, a lot. The thing is, Russians are not fake nor pretentious neither they like ppl that are like that. They're lovely simple down to earth ppl and they don't take any kind of BS. If you "act", they will not smile back. I love that!!
I’ve always enjoyed this kind of cultural comparison due to the perspective it brings to my own inherited behaviors (American).
Does anyone have recommendations of resources where I can read further comparisons? Is there a name for the study of these cultural differences?
They do. Just not round the clock.
When Americans smile, they think they are being friendly, but in some cultures it is perceived as a predatory grin. Cold War propaganda posters often show Americans smiling, and it's not to show the are friendly, easy-going people.
Common telesales advice is to smile before you pick up the phone, because people can hear your smile and are generally more receptive to whatever you're going to say if you sound friendly. I wonder if this trick works in Russia?
No offense, but the American Hollywood style smiles don't even look like smiles to me. More like a dog baring their teeth to warn you.
Not Russian, but close enough to the Russian space.
I find this article quaint.
It at one point says:
> It was really different from Europe, where people are mostly polite, but quite reserved in their non-verbal expressions.
but it also says:
> Very often Western people criticize Russians for being too gloomy and unfriendly because we never smile.
It seems to be somewhat undecided on whether the smiling culture is a U.S.A. idiosyncrasy, or a “western" one, and it very much is the former, I believe, the U.S.A. cultural emphasis on smiles is wel known throughout most of the world, including most of “the west”.
I especially enjoy reading this from the school newspaper of the University where fun goes to die (my alma mater). :)
I guess I would fit in better in Russia
Interacting with strangers, Russians are coconuts whilst Americans are peaches. I've found Erin Meyer's Culture Map[1] a good guide to navigating different cultures.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22085568-the-culture-map
Melting pot cultures, like Brazil and America's, do not have common ethno-linguistic substrate on which to build civic society. Overt, ostentatious displays of goodwill and trust are a selected-for meme in successful, modern melting-pot cultures.
I predict that smile incidence will vary in correlation to the ethnic homogeneity of a polity.
it's not just Russian, traditionally countries in East Asia are like that too. I have also heard the Brit and the German are like that
Latvian here, very true story
Bunch of nonsense, which ignores the fact of crippled trust and hostility in a psychologically crippled post-communist society. What does “cultural difference” mean? If you dig a bit of history in the last 110 years in Russia and have a basic understanding of psychology - you can easily answer why people don’t smile in Russia.
Something like 30 million Russians were killed by socialism in the last century... I imagine that has an effect on your culture.
Mona Lisa was special in part because it was uncommon for people to smile. In Middle Ages, someone smiling a lot would be perceived as stupid. That's why facial expressions in medieval imagery are so serious. Today, being surprised a lot is often taken as a sign of stupidity, whereas in ancient Greece an owl was the bird of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Because, obviously, an owl is always surprised, and surprise is the first step to understanding.
Regardless that I look Russian but not, I guess this is one of many cultural reasons why I get along with them so well. Being socially forced to smile and be positive all of the time (toxic positivity) seems fake and mentally-unhealthy to me. I understand wanting to brighten other people's day but to sustain manic/positive/energetic appearance all of the time and towards everyone sounds exhausting.
The other thing I like about Russian culture is, like a cardiologist or a brain surgeon, finding humor in everything (brain surgeons may find less than they were expecting but they're an optimistic bunch).
A CIA agent is sent on a mission in Moscow.
He goes to a grocery store and writes down in his diary "There is no food".
He then goes to a clothes shop and puts down in the diary "There are no shoes".
He leaves the shop, and a KGB agent waiting for him outside says: "You know, 10 years ago we would have shot you for that."
The CIA agent writes in his diary "There are no bullets".
I think Americans tend to smile all the time because they don't want to appear hostile to someone who is very likely to carry a gun. That's why they also don't have funny offensive chants in football and are not very good in general banter, they are just afraid to offence somebody by accident.
As an American, I have never trusted people who always smile.
I hate to say this, but in my little life, I was right.
I have a conniving greedy, but very successful financially, little sister, whom used her smile as a tool.
TL;DR
Unless it's amusing Russians do not smile;
I guess I should have been born in Russia.
Might explain why I got along so well with my old German neighbors.
Given their cultural history, is it possible Russians see the American sense of smiling as an individual asserting their superiority to others?
I like how everyone in the west have a fake smile in pictures. I hated seeing myself like that so I stopped smiling for pictures at an early age (to great irritation of my relatives).
Unrelated but I recently discovered an admiration toward Russian pharmacology, they have discovered some of the most interesting drugs out there, especially on the topic of anxiolytics and extending lifespan.
> Very often Western people criticize Russians for being too gloomy and unfriendly because we never smile
WTF? I'm very often around Russian and other Slav people and many of them smile plenty.
> In Western culture, and especially in the United States, the smile is an indication of well-being ... In Russian culture the smile is identified with laughter. Russians do not smile unless something funny happens and provides a reason for laughter.
Massive over-generalization. Local culture, personality and personal life background induce much more variability in tendency to smile than whether you're Russian/Slav or not.
Also, the author seems to lump the US and Europe together, something I also frown upon.
Bottom line: I am not smiling at this article.
Estonian here. At Skype (10+ years ago) I observed, that members of large cultures (American, British, Hindu etc.) had real trouble adjusting to the predominantly Estonian-based engineering culture. Probably because they had never had to adjust, commonly people adjust to _their_ culture as it tends to dominate large organizations. But once they did make an honest attempt, that was always most welcomed and gained them a large amount of goodwill. Our US CEO going to a sauna with 20 naked engineers...
I’ve also seen the “how are you” thing described in comments unfold.
A Hindu pm had the habit of sitting next to developers while they worked, sometimes putting a hand on their knee. After being politely explained that the size of an Estonian personal space is measured in astronomical units and that this was the reason devs literally scattered upon his approach, he immediately changed his behavior and became great friends with the team.
A US lady came to hr complaining about an Ukrainian dev approaching them inappropriately during a party. The hr-person, having witnessed the situation, explained that this was just their way of showing friendly interest and no disrespect was intended. A while later, a Japanese guy came to the hr person complaining the original lady from us had hugged them. Again, it was explained that this is just what Americans do.
Cultures are hard and take a lot of mutual respect to work through.