National Poker Face: Happy or not, Russians rarely smile in public
May-June 2009
by Maria Krakovsky, from Psychology Today
 |
image by ITAR-TASS / Alexei Filippov
|
American visitors to Russia often can’t get over the natives’ sullen looks, worn by service workers and passersby alike. But what might appear to be a nationwide case of the blues has a more benign origin.
RELATED CONTENT
The War on Fat October 18, 2002 Issue By Erica Sagrans A merica's weight consciousness probably be...
Ever caught that cheesy Mexican soap down the dial? Chances are it’s an international hit....
How young, gifted Americans are reviving the Reds......
45,000 people from 46 countries were surveyed this year, here's what they said...
While it’s true that Russians are generally less happy than Americans, the difference isn’t huge, explains Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California at Riverside and the author of The How of Happiness. In fact, in private, it’s Americans who look more subdued, says Lyubomirsky, who grew up in Moscow. “You go to a dinner at a Russian home, and the Russians seem happier—they’re drinking, singing, telling stories.”
This public-private divide hints at a set of cultural rules about when to show your feelings. David Matsumoto, a psychologist at San Francisco State University who led a worldwide study of rules about emotional display, found that Russians control their expressions of emotion much more than Americans do. This is true of collectivist societies in general: Where people are more interdependent and group-oriented, they tend to either neutralize their emotional responses or mask one expression with another—especially with strangers and in public.
Tamping down emotional displays reinforces the borders between friends and strangers, which in collectivist societies are hard to cross. In individualist, mobile societies like the United States, in contrast, relationships come and go more easily, leading to more openness with everyone. Oblivious to these rules, both sides are bound to misread each other’s faces. Just as Americans mistake Russian reserve for surliness, Russians find friendly American smiles phony.