London: A new study has revealed that smiling and bearing all the misery quietly might cause more harm than good to people while they are feeling upset.
It was found that if people force themselves to grin when they are in a bad mood then their brain starts to associate it with sadness instead of joy and next time when they would smile it could bring back miserable memories instead of lifting the bad mood, the Daily Express reported.
The study results also showed that if people would fake a smile then it won’t cheer them up and they were just using it to “mask” their inner sadness.
Anirban Mukhopadhyay, an associate professor of marketing at Hong Kong University Science and Technology, suggested that people should wait until their unhappiness lifts before attempting a grin, as it could backfire and make them feel worse, because they might interpret smiling as trying to become happy.
She further explained that smiling by itself does not increase happiness, or wellbeing, instead, the belief that one must already be happy when one smiles would what increase happiness, and as a result, wellbeing.