Cultural difference I’m starting to get a handle on:
In smiley cultures (like the Bay Area culture I’m in, and maybe also things like Minnesota Nice or Southern Politeness), being smiley and positive means “I’m okay with interacting with you again, and potentially open to eventually having a relationship with you that involves meaningful mutual benefit.”
If someone’s being smiley/positive/effusive, it doesn’t mean they genuinely like you, it doesn’t mean they’re willing to offer you any concrete thing now, it just means they haven’t ruled out having a positive relationship with you, maybe sometime in the future. And they’re okay with you continuing to engage with them, meeting you again, talking to you again, etc.
By contrast, if they seem frowny or severe or reserved, they’re mad at you, you fucked up, you are expected to go away or demonstrate appeasement behavior NOW, or else.
In non-smiley cultures (Russians seem to be like this, sometimes also Israelis and American rednecks), people will often be incredibly generous and helpful with practical things, without giving any nonverbal/subliminal signals of warmth or liking.
From my perspective, people like that seem like “scowl scowl scowl I hate your guts…btw here’s a bar of solid gold. also you’re dead wrong about that thing. but i really liked your work on that other thing.”
wait what. you act incredibly cold to me, but you give me this unbelievably valuable gift, at nontrivial cost to yourself? what? why?
and you’re really critical of me, and of people in general, but you’re giving me really high praise in a specific instance? what gives? dude, do you like me or not?
The thing is, in non-smiley culture, as far as I can tell, “I like you enough to want to engage with you at all” isn’t…a thing you have to signal by smiling or acting friendly. It’s set to on by default if they are talking to you at all.
You don’t have to develop emotional rapport or “liking” as a prelude to entering a relationship where mutual benefit is potentially on the table – you’re already in that relationship, as soon as you’re talking to the scowly guy.
Non-smiley cultures use actions first as a gauge of how much someone is “on your side” – they’ll be like “wow, this guy did something really generous for me, therefore I feel more friendly towards him”. Affection and warmth and smiles are for close friends and loved ones – they’re an achievement you unlock through acts of generosity.
In smiley cultures it’s just the reverse – people will only exchange acts of generosity after they’ve exchanged social signals of friendliness, and not signaling friendliness means I will definitely never do anything generous for you.
(People from non-smiley cultures often say that smiley cultures are “fake nice” – “you’re acting like my close friend when you’re clearly not. you were incredibly unwilling to help me in any meaningful way.”)
Adapting to non-smiley norms is interesting to me – it’s like communicating between two submarines via sonar or something. “okayyy…I can intellectually tell from your words and actions that you want to cooperate…so i’ll just brute-force my way through the stress of feeling like you don’t like me, and…yikes…tell you with my words when I disagree with you or don’t like something you do? like we’re married or siblings or something? before we’ve built up any emotional intimacy?? okay then…”
but I actually suspect the non-smiley way is objectively better, because you can cooperate with people way sooner, and with a much wider range of backgrounds and personality types.
^^^^^^ back home, smiling and saying hello to a stranger on the street gets you suspicious side-eye. Like, what do you want? Are you going to give me a pamphlet and lecture for an hour? Ask for money? What? Let me get on with my day, thanks. But at the same time, if you need directions or help with something it’s no issue.
Oh my god, the non-smiley culture is dead-on me, living in Redneck Nowhere, Iowa.
Wait really? Wow that’s so weird. I live in iowa too and we’re a smiley town. It’s small too, like around 15k total. I’m uhh,, central northwest ish? Around Ames. And pretty much everywhere around here is like that. Where are you at?
It’s varied in Iowa, TBH. Some places are smiley and some aren’t. I’ve run into both.
I’m in eastern IA, on the tip of the nose.
I’m def from a rural non-smiley town. “I actually really hate your guts, but I also can’t in good conscious let you sit here on a three day walk to the City with a flat tire and no food or water in your car, why’d you even buy a car, you know only trucks can make it out here, we don’t even have all our roads paved, god I hate you but Jesus says…”
Yep that’s exactly it.
Like, I’ll help you call a tow truck and stick around until it shows up, but I’ll also tell you that you’re a damn fucking fool for trying to drive your rear-wheel drive death trap of a car through a cow pasture.