SMILE!

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This is a quickie post that will likely turn into a venting thread. So be it. But I was reading in a psych textbook today that people show their dominance by being polite, having relaxed but still "good" posture, and- NOT SMILING. I remembered from experience and another thread how often Aspies seem to get the "smile!" thing. Could the desire to make others smile stem not only from the desire for others to "have fun" around you (I do think that this is usually a factor) but also some desire to not have the person not smiling seem dominant? At the very least, it might be uncomfortable to be around a smiling person because people think that that person is trying to be dominant?

Or is that a stretch? It probably is. But, oh well, I thought it worth sharing.

...

Oh yeah. <-- I'm not trying to establish dominance.

I think that might be a factor.. or just to know the person has a sense of humour, so it's ok to joke around them, (I joke all the time).

Alot of the time I don't smile, though.

I'm usually pretty polite to people; I may even be over-the-top polite sometimes, and I guess this is why sometimes people aren't comfortable speaking freely around me. I'm usually described as very rigid in my posture; either that or I slouch (without really consciously noticing either the slouching or the rigidity). I rarely smile.

Apparently, all this gives people the impression that I'm fairly emotionally cold. I believe this impression is mistaken because I can be very passionate about some things.

I used to get "SMILE!" crap all the time. Before I discovered how to tweeze my eyebrows, I looked a lot angrier than I really am. Now, I either look happier, or I just scare people away before they can make requests about stuff like that.

My extra-extroverted NT officemate is always complaining about how our boss always looks mad and should smile more. I've told her repeatedly that he's not angry, he's busy, he's very matter-of-fact, but she still doesn't get it. In reality, he's very thick-skinned and it's hard to get him totally riled up (at least visibly). She still seems scared of him even though I've told her to not take his lack of apparent "friendliness" personally. Then she tries to tell one of the guys from next door to smile, and he either rolls his eyes or changes the subject. Her efforts to school him in the art of general pleasantries amuse me to no end, but that's another story for another thread.

People used to tell me all the time to smile.I HATED smiling(and in a way I still do),but now people tell me that I'm ALWAYS smiling which I find rather odd...

-SpaceCase

That's a dominating smile!

Sometimes I feel like I'm doing a sort of wry smile, but from what I've seen when I'm near a mirror, that expression doesn't look like a smile at all.