"If you're in a pickle" - SMILE
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| Recipe website www.greatlittleideas.com |
Sir Richard Branson in Entreprneur.com Dec 3rd wrote
“….. In business, a
smile can often defuse a difficult situation. If you are negotiating with a
tough investor or discussing issues with a customer, a smile will show that you
are willing to listen and eager to help. Smiling is infectious, so your smile
may have just brightened up the day for many other people too ……
"...Over the years I have become known as the smiley man with the beard. It could be worse!.."
Sir Richard Branson
A city smile
A smiling face can become a city’s brand. Go back to 1983
and Glasgow’s miles better campaign with Roger Hargreaves ‘Mr Happy' did wonders for
raising Glasgow’s profile.
A brand new ( and not so new) smile
Thompson holidays have a smile in their logo on posters TV
ads and shop fronts. The Amazon box
delivered to your home has a smile on it , as the Reddit button on your screen,
Mr Megabus on the back of the coach on
the road, the Jolly Green Giant on the supermarket shelf.
Withholding a selling smile
Of all the business news stories of 2012 with a customer service
theme that caught my attention, was the news report of the threat in the
negotiations between representatives for front line service personnel of the
airline Cathay Pacific and their management ,to withhold smiling to passengers as wells as withhold the serving drinks
and food to on board to passengers and also that they would.
For years those folk who sold over the phone learnt to ‘smile as they dialled’ because it
made their voice sound friendlier.
Smiling has also been studied and reported on by those in
the field of psychology.
Poker face
People have known
the phrase of a poker face meaning emotionally neutral. Yet if a poker player with a skilled
reputation plays an unskilled one is would probably be best (s)he smiles as a
strategy to relax their opponent in order to win money off them.
Status and not smiling
Status affects how readily people return smiles
Differential states of subjective power influence
spontaneous facial mimicry = Evan W Carr
and others
The results suggest that subjective states of high-power and
low-power can have fundamental impacts on emotional awareness and perception,
which are evident in nonverbal behaviours such as mimicry. The current study
spurs interesting and immediately applicable questions for research in emotion,
relationships, and social hierarchies. E. W. CARR, P. WINKIELMAN, C. OVEIS;
UCSD, LA JOLLA, CA October 15th 2012 Neuroscience
2012
Subjects were shown videos of people they were told held a
high-ranking position, like a physician, or a low-ranking job, like a fast-food
restaurant worker.
He recorded the involuntary movements of muscles involved in
smiling as they watched the videos, millisecond by millisecond.
Whether or not someone unconsciously mimics the facial
expressions of another—such as by returning a smile—appeared to depend, in
part, on how powerful the mimic feels, and the status of the person they are
"mirroring," he found.
The researchers found that when people felt they were
powerful themselves, they would rarely return a high-ranking person's smile,
automatically suppressing the tendency to mimic an engaging grin, the
researchers found.
"You might be feeling more competitive," Mr. Carr
said.
Those who felt more powerless, however, automatically
mimicked everyone else's smile, regardless of rank.
"Your feelings about power and status seem to dictate
how much you are willing to return a smile to another person," Mr. Carr
said. "We are really able to act as a human chameleon and react to these
social situations without really being aware of doing it
This "boss effect" can vary by national culture.
Chinese workers reacted fastest to a picture of their direct supervisor—but
only if the boss had the power to give them a negative job evaluation,
according to a study last year by Dr. Liew and colleagues at the University of
Southern California and Peking University.
Related links:
Ron Gutman TED Talk The hidden power of Smiling
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