Photo: NBC
And here I was thinking that I was on the fast-track to Cool-ville. Although, saying “Cool-ville” only pushes me farther away from being cool.
According to Moneyish, smiling not only makes you look less cool, it makes you look cold. At least that’s what it states in a study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
The research had participants judge the coolness of models in print ads, and found that “emotionally inexpressive” people didn’t seem cool, but cold. Here’s what Caleb Warren, the lead study author and assistant professor of marketing at the University of Arizona, had to say:
“There’s this belief that the way people become cool is by being inexpressive. What I’m trying to communicate with this paper is that’s often wrong. Most of the time, being inexpressive makes people seem less cool. They’d be better off by smiling.”
Moneyish
To test whether people seem more cool when they don’t show emotion versus when they smile, Warren and his co-authors showed study participants clothing brand print ads in which the model — among them famous faces like Michael Jordan and James Dean — was either smiling or inexpressive. Participants perceived models to be cooler when they smiled, the authors found, “because being inexpressive makes the endorsers seem less warm.”
An additional experiment — depicting an MMA fighter interacting with his opponent before a fight — found that highly competitive interactions were an exception. In a competitive context, being inexpressive was viewed as a sign of dominance, and therefore seen as cooler. The fighter interacting with fans in a more cooperative setting, on the other hand, yielded a similar result as the print ad study.
“The thought experiment that I like to use is, if you’re at the dinner table, being inexpressive isn’t cool,” Warren said. “But if you’re at the poker table, it is.”
Here’s another study: New Study Suggests Going To A Concert Is Better For You Than Yoga
Warren believes that brands should have models smile more to have them come across as cooler. Warren even decided to roast Kanye West and his lack of smiling:
“Generally, you’re better off smiling than being inexpressive — which is, again, the opposite of what Kanye West said. Probably, Kanye would look cooler if he smiled. And if he talked less, but that’s a different issue.”
Burn.
