From Good Cheer to "Drive-By Smiling": A Social History of Cheerfulness

March 13, 2006 9:06 PM

The history of emotions has yielded substantial studies on love, anger, fear, grief, jealousy, and many other discrete emotions. However, there is no particular study of cheerfulness, a rather moderate emotion, which, for reasons that I will discuss further, has remained unnoticeable to the scholarly eye. Based on much of the historical literature on emotions, some primary sources and some other areas of cultural history, I outline here the social use and conceptualization of cheerfulness over the last three centuries. I argue that, in the modern age, cheerfulness rose in value and became the most favored emotion for experience and display; as such, it was individually sought and socially encouraged until it became the main emotional norm of twentieth-century America.

From Good Cheer to "Drive-By Smiling": A Social History of Cheerfulness
And the Taxonomy of Emotion Terms there is of interest on its own.
posted by y2karl (10 comments total)

I'm so happy you posted this.
posted by mullingitover at 9:26 PM on March 13, 2006

'Fake cheerfulness' gets a few hits on Google and most of them seem to be connected with a job. That's not suprising in light of this: "But over the nineteenth century small business owners discovered the importance of the positive mood in the sales environment. Increasing competition required niceness to clients, including emotional niceness. The rising economy of mass consumption during the 1920s called for "cheerful salespeople careful to avoid provocation of vital customers.""
I'll give this a full read this evening as it looks interesting, if a tad depressing. Thanks y2karl.
posted by tellurian at 10:25 PM on March 13, 2006

Thanks y2karl. I'm surprised that she separates love and joy at such a high level in the taxonomy, and that lust and love are placed close together, and bitterness and anger. Its an interesting exercise though, for sure, even if a little inexplicable. The article was a good read as well.

Mark Kingwell's history of the idea of happiness In Pursuit of Happiness (Amazon) (not at all self help book despite the title) is along the same lines as your link.
posted by Rumple at 10:51 PM on March 13, 2006

Happiness is overrated. Can you name one person who was both happy and interesting?
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:10 AM on March 14, 2006

Wonderful post. I'm reading the first article now. Phoney friendliness seems to be ubiquitous everywhere there is something for sale. Thank you, y2karl.
posted by reflecked at 1:19 AM on March 14, 2006

Eh. I soldiered on after the opening blow of "The culture of emotions, also known as 'emotionology'..." but she lost me at this: "Sentimentalism was part of the Age of Enlightenment: tear-provoking novels such as Richardson's 'Pamela' and 'Shamela'..." For pete's sake, Shamela is by Fielding, not Richardson, and it's a parody of Pamela—it says so right there in the title! (Read about it here.)

I'm sure her basic point, that cheerfulness has become more appreciated and prevalent, is valid, but it's also pretty obvious; furthermore, it's a good thing. I'm cheerful and glad of it. Astro, I hereby authorize you to do my moping for me.

The taxonomy is pretty neat, though.
posted by languagehat at 5:32 AM on March 14, 2006

Happiness is overrated. Can you name one person who was both happy and interesting?

Shirley Maclain
Buddha
Your mother*
Stalin
Bette Middler
Tom Cruise


*after I'm done with her
posted by Meatbomb at 5:49 AM on March 14, 2006

Have a nice day. :)
posted by nickyskye at 7:29 AM on March 14, 2006

Thanks y2karl. I'm surprised that she separates love and joy at such a high level in the taxonomy, and that lust and love are placed close together, and bitterness and anger.

The taxonomy is after ...Sandra Metts and John Bowers "Emotion in Interpersonal Communication," Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, as the caption on the page notes, just to be clear.

I'm sure her basic point, that cheerfulness has become more appreciated and prevalent, is valid...

Um, that is a gross over-simplification of her thesis. The article is a nitpicker's delight, languagehat--she misspelled Peter Kramer's name as well., for example--but you should have perhaps at least skimmed the article a bit further. There is a bit more to it than your dismissal suggests.

...The media industry invented special devices to induce cheerfulness—something it has not done for any other emotion. The laugh track is a curious American invention, still resisted by many countries. On the other hand, in the U.S. laugh track usage has escalated over the years spurring on a highly paid professional industry that now turns out CDs of various kinds of laughter, from chuckling to mad howling. Judging by its regular intervals, the laugh track serves not so much to point out the humor of a show as to keep the audience in an uplifted mood. Technologized laughter provokes cheerfulness through contagion among mass audiences.

...Emotion management at the work place is meant to implement the emotion culture an institution has adopted. Therefore, studies of emotion management portray well the standard of cheerfulness workers are expected to keep up. In Hochschild's study* of airline culture cheerfulness is maintained for a three-fold purpose. First, it ensures a productive work environment. As an office boss says, fully in line with the Victorian expectation that women should do emotion work for men: "I need a secretary who can stay cheerful when I go grouchy, when work piles up and everything goes wrong." A second goal is to create a sense of family around the company that would keep both personnel and passengers feeling happy and safe. Delta Airlines trains flight attendants not only to cheer up customers but to cheer up each other as part of their team-work. Yet a third goal involves the old-time meaning of cheerfulness as a sign of managing problems well and being in control of the situation, which creates an aura of success about the company. The market competition has made business highly dependent on a company's ethos of cheer.

....*Arlie Hochschild, in The Managed Heart, argues that corporations use human feeling as a commodity since they pay for emotion labor as part of the job. As she says, Cheerfulness in the line of duty becomes something different from ordinary good cheer...

And Scott Fahlman is responsible for the smiley ?

I did not know that. /Johnny Carson

And, speaking of misspelled names, that's Shirley MacLaine and Bette Midler, meatbomb. But you did get Buddha, Stalin and Tom Cruise right.

And you listed Tom Cruise as interesting.

Interesting....
posted by y2karl at 9:09 AM on March 14, 2006

Interesting? Trying to make oneself interesting by not being happy? I don't know what the goal would be there, get yourself so f@#$ed up that Zeus and his buddies would look down off Olympus and say, "Whoa, we haven't had a mortal that screwy in a long time! Let's turn ourselves into goats and seduce him/her to REALLY see how much we can mess her/him up!"?

I'm more likely to talk to a happy looking person than an unhappy looking one and I'm betting both statistics and turning one's head 360 degrees in a city park will back me up on this being a fairly solid trend.

(That said an obsessive need to subvert all emotions (particularly those which nobody likes to see), under a shallow stagnant pond of mindless cheer is VERY painful to attempt or to witness over a long period of time.) But really, being a person who tries to genuinely enjoy life while genuinely accepting some sorrow is going to make a person more interesting to everybody around them, except possibly greco-roman deities and psychologists.)
posted by SomeOneElse at 7:15 PM on March 14, 2006