Now here's something you may not have thought about before unless of course you encountered it as a cross cultural difference. When is it appropriate to smile? In the last video we talked about McDonald's how they had to modify their signature product. The all-beef hamburger in order to do business in India. But the prohibition on eating beef is only one of the many cultural boundaries they had to cross as they expanded worldwide. One difference they encountered concern when it's appropriate to smile. Now, before listening to these lectures, some of you probably thought that smiling was just a natural response, a reflex. Something given by our biology as humans. But now, you can perhaps appreciate that is not just natural but also one of those culturally learned routines. It is second nature in the sense of the old Roman saying these are product of culturally acquired habits. In particular, when to smile and how to smile are embodied cultural routines. They are part of what we are calling the habitus. Correspondingly conditions under which smiling is not appropriate can vary and differences in this regard can produce cultural boundaries. Trifling as it may seem, the embodied culture of smiling can also cause problems. In the US, McDonald's wanted its employees to smile. They felt that this communicated a sense of friendliness and openness. But in business transactions in some parts of the world like Russia and China. If a wait person at a restaurant smiles at a customer, customers may feel they are being laughed at. The expectation is that wait persons should maintain a serious demeanor. If smiling by wait persons can be taken as laughing at the customer in some context. And that smiling can be taken as unfriendliness in other context. I recall a local restaurant near where lived closed about a year ago but it had been there for maybe 15 years, and I eat there often. The food was really very good and not terribly expensive, and I got to know the restaurant pretty well. The woman who ran it was from China. She would also take our orders. During these business transactions, she never smiled. Not once that I can recall. And I invariably experienced this as unfriendliness. Over time, I got to know her better. I would have conversations with her it became clear that she was indeed friendly. And actually could and did smile,but when she was taking my order her lips would never form themselves into a smile. And I did never did quit get over the feeling that the absence of the smile was a mark of unfamilyness. Even hostility amazing how something so seemingly insignificant can have this effect. Michael Bohm and the weekly newspaper The Moscow Times in 2011 wrote, the American smile has a terrible reputation in Russia. He explains that during the Soviet era, the image of an insincere, insidious American smile was used in portrayals of American politicians as Warmongers. It was also used in characterizations of ordinary Americans as using smiles to betray one another in business and personal relations. A story I've heard concerns Japanese businessmen in India during the 1980s. According to this story, the Japanese were losing market share to the Americans. When they did some research to find out why, one of the discoveries they made was that the Indians preferred the American businessmen. WHy? Because they smiled. So guess what? The Japanese instated smile training. Fast forward to 2009 and The Guardian newspaper reports that a Japanese railway company has introduced smile scanning software. Employees are required each day to smile into a camera attached to a computer, which then, guess what, measures their smile. According to the article, the machine then analyzes things like eye movement, lip curvature, and facial wrinkles, and rates the overall quality of their smile on a scale ranging from 0, suicidal, to 100, delirious. It also gives suggestions for improvement and a printout of the employee's ideal smile. Evidently this company believes that more employees smiling on the trainline will improve team performance and can be good for business. Clearly the company is also trying to spread the culture of smiling. We may wonder whether this is evidence of the American cultural routines of smiling, crossing cultural boundaries into Japanese business culture. In the next video, we look at ways in which Japanese businesses have resisted certain aspects of American business culture. And as we end this video make sure to smile.
