A smile seems to have a favorable influence upon others and makes one likable and more approachable In the social context, smiling and laughter have different functions in the order of sequence in social situations:
- Smiling is sometimes a pre-laughing device and is a common pattern for paving the way to laughter;
- Smiling can be used as a response to laughter in the previous turn.
Smiling is a signaling system that evolved from a need to communicate information in many different forms. One of these is an advertisement of sexual interest. Female smiles are appealing to heterosexual males, increasing physical attractiveness, and enhancing sex appeal. However, recent research indicates a man’s smile may or may not be most effective in attracting heterosexual women, and that facial expressions such as pride or even shame might be more effective. The researchers did not explicitly study the role of smiles in other sexual preferences. While smiling is perceived as a positive emotion most of the time, there are many cultures that perceive smiling as a negative expression and consider it unwelcoming. Too much smiling can be viewed as a sign of shallowness or dishonesty. In some parts of Asia, people may smile when they are embarrassed or in emotional pain.
Some people may smile at others to indicate a friendly greeting. A smile may be reserved for close friends and family members. Many people in the former Soviet Union area consider smiling at strangers in public to be unusual and even suspicious behavior or even a sign of stupidity. Philosophy of happiness is often discussed in conjunction with ethics. Traditional European societies, inherited from the Greeks and from Christianity, often linked happiness with morality, which was concerned with the performance in a certain kind of role in a certain kind of social life. However, with the rise of individualism, begotten partly by Protestantism and capitalism, the links between duty in society and happiness were gradually broken. The consequence was a redefinition of the moral terms. Happiness is no longer defined in relation to social life but in terms of individual psychology. Happiness, however, remains a difficult term for moral philosophy. Throughout the history of moral philosophy, there has been an oscillation between attempts to define morality in terms of consequences leading to happiness and attempts to define morality in terms that have nothing to do with happiness at all
