So, do Danes smile more than anyone in the world? No, people in Milan smile just as much, and people in Málaga smile even more than Danes. However, people in Copenhagen smile more than people in New York, Marrakesh and Warsaw. On average, 12.7 per cent of people smile in Copenhagen, less than 2 per cent in New York, and people in Málaga smile more frequently (almost 14 per cent).
However, this should all be taken with a pinch of salt, because what matters is whether people are with others. People seldom smile when they are by themselves; this is something that’s common across the countries I’ve visited.
There is a strong link between whether people walk alone or with other people and how often people smile. In cities like New York, Seoul and Riga, people usually walk by themselves in the daytime. Fewer than one in five is with someone else – and the smile ratio in these countries is among the lowest in the world. At the other end of the spectrum are smiling cities like Málaga and Milan, where people are more often with others.
Therefore, it also matters where in the city you measure smiles. You will get a higher frequency of smiles in Regent’s Park where friends and family stroll together than on the busy Strand in central London.
How often do people smile on the streets?
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Copenhagen: 12.7%
Madrid: 9.5%
Montreal: 9.5%
Guadalajara: 9.2%
Stockholm: 9.2%
Lisbon: 7.7%
Riga: 7.1%
Marrakesh: 6.8%
Vancouver: 6.8%
Warsaw: 6.2%
Paris: 5.1%
Helsinki: 4.7%
Seoul: 4.7%
Amsterdam: 4.4%
London: 4.3%
Dublin: 4%
Lille: 3.3%
New York: 1.4%
Source: The Happiness Research Institute
Culture also comes into play. In some countries, smiling people may be perceived as kinder, friendlier and more attractive, while in others smiling is associated with lower levels of intelligence.
A team of researchers led by Kuba Krys, a psychologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences, has gained some insight into cultural differences in the perception of smiling individuals. The researchers asked 4,519 participants from 44 different cultures to rate photos of smiling and unsmiling individuals on how honest and intelligent they thought these individuals were.
Countries to the left of the red line to the left consider smiling people to be significantly less intelligent than non-smiling individuals; countries to the right of the red line to the right rate people who smile as significantly more intelligent.
Source: Kuba Krys et al, ‘Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgements of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals’, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 2016
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The researchers found that in countries like Germany, Switzerland and Malaysia, smiling people were perceived as significantly more intelligent than people who didn’t smile, while in countries like Japan, South Korea and Russia, people who smiled were perceived as less intelligent. In fact, I’ve been told there is a Russian proverb that translates as ‘Laughing for no reason is a sign of stupidity.’
HAPPINESS TIP:
SMILE AND CHAT TO STRANGERS
Hand out smiles and friendly remarks. They are free.
Make small talk. Have a friendly chat. Give a compliment. Americans have mastered this art; Danes are notoriously bad at friendly chats with strangers.
I try to be better at it, but sometimes I try and I fail. Two years ago, I walked into a lift at a university in Copenhagen. In it was a man who looked very much like me and dressed exactly like me: glasses, brown leather briefcase, blue trousers, white shirt, brown blazer. Also like me, his longish hair was going grey – or, as I like to call it, executive blond. Anyway, he looked like my stunt double – elbow patches and all.
‘Are you here for the twin study, too?’ I asked.
‘No.’
Longest lift ride ever.
Sometimes you swing for kindness but awkwardness hits you in the face. But sometimes you try and you succeed and, for those five seconds, the world is a better place. It may also be the first five seconds of a longer journey towards a kinder world. Remember, big things often have small beginnings.
KINDNESS: A LANGUAGE THAT THE BLIND CAN SEE
Mark Twain once wrote that kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. Robert Levine has taken that literally.
One day when he was six years old he saw a man lying in the middle of a crowded pavement in a busy part of New York City. The people passing by were not only ignoring the man but were avoiding getting too close to him.
Many years later, travelling in Myanmar, Robert found himself in a crowded market in Rangoon. The sun was hot, the air was dusty and it was difficult to breathe. Suddenly, a young man carrying a huge bag fell down in the middle of the crowd. People quickly gathered around him. Sellers left their stands, brought him water and placed a blanket under his head while they fetched a doctor.
Today, Robert is a professor of psychology at California State University and is researching what makes people care for each other and why cities are so different when it comes to their approach to kindness. Robert has conducted three different experiments, all on busy streets, to test the kindness of strangers.
The experiments involve creating a situation in which a stranger needs help. In the pen scenario, a pen is dropped on the pavement, apparently without its owner noticing. In the hurt scenario, an experimenter wearing a leg brace and walking with a limp drops a magazine and is obviously struggling to pick it up. In the blind scenario, the experimenter feigns blindness and approaches the kerb of a busy junction and waits for someone to help him cross the street.
What the researchers discovered was that the main predictor of how much people help others in cities is how crowded the city is. If there are more people, individuals feel more disconnected and less responsible for others and are therefore less willing to help. When they looked at twenty-four cities in the US, the researchers found that the lowest level of help was in New York City and the highest was in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Nevertheless, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil turned out to be the place with the kindest people on earth – more helpful than those in Copenhagen, for example – even though Rio has about twelve times more citizens than the Danish capital. (One curious thing: Copenhagen is a city where people are more likely to pick up a pen than to help a blind person across the street. The reason for this might be that Danes put a high price on personal space – or pens.) So why is there so much kindness in such a crowded place as Rio?
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HAPPINESS TIP:
DON’T ASK, JUST HELP
Bypass the whole ‘Let me know if there is anything I or we can do’ thing. You know what to do.
One afternoon when I was in high school, I came home and saw our neighbour, Niels, shovelling gravel in his driveway. I picked up a shovel and joined him. It was obvious he could do with some help – there was no reason for me to ask. A couple of years later my mother died, and a few days after that Niels and his wife, Rita, rang my doorbell: ‘Come over and eat with us tonight.’ It was that kind of street. You didn’t ask if people needed something, you just gave them what they needed. The point is that, sometimes, there is no reason to ask if someone needs help – so just help.
In an article in American Scientist, social psychologist Aroldo Rodrigues, a colleague of Levine’s at California State University, explains that it might be because of language and culture: ‘There is an important word in Brazil: simpático. It refers to a range of desirable social qualities – to be friendly, nice, agreeable and good-natured, a person who is fun to be with and pleasant to deal with. It is a social quality. Brazilians want to be seen as simpático. And going out of one’s way to assist strangers is part of this image.’ The importance of simpático could also explain the high levels of kindness in Hispanic cities such as San José, Mexico City and Madrid.