We tend to think that “good people tend to do good things.” But what if it wasn’t a person’s intrinsic “goodness” or personality that influenced their behavior, but something far simpler?
What if …
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SMILE
I find the phenomena of the smile very mysterious.
It’s my impression a lot of animals smile, I think it predates humanity. My dog probably smiles at me more than anyone & gets by far the most charity.
I’m not even sure a smile isn’t (sometimes at least) a subtle assertion of dominance or mild aggression, perhaps playful aggression. I recall when I was a teenager someone reported my minor drunken vandalism to the police, later I smiled at them in the street, as if to say “no hard feelings”, they were quite frightened by my smile.
I hope Greenpeace street colllectors read this article, in my town they are as overtly aggressive and abusive toward people they’re trying to get money off as they are toward the corporations they attack.
My dog seems to be smarter than Greenpeace.
I really enjoyed this article. A smile can change others. In my organization behavior class we always talked about changing ourselves to change others. It goes to show that even a facial expression can alter a person’s behavior.
I agree with the premise presented here. I am doing a 30 day experiment to test this myself and documenting my experiences at my blog TheSmilingExperiment.com So far the results have been very positive. Even my mother-in-law likes me now.
What was the hypothesis of this study? Independent variable? Dependent variable?
Good ol’ Jim always has the good questions.