Smile!: An Attitude of Filipinos

Abstract

A smile is one of the most common nonverbal signals used in communication among humans. After more than 100 years of research on facial expressions, everyone still knows relatively little about the causation of smiling and its social functions. A smile is the major component of a facial display associated with and caused by feelings of happiness or joy. The smiler's motivation may be genuine friendliness or an intent to establish friendly relations. Social smiles appear to be direct behavioral expressions of positive emotional engagement. Through a purposive sampling, this study unlocked and identified selected individuals in terms of how they tend to smile, as well as the causes and consequences of smiling. This study used observation and phenomenological qualitative research methods. Thus, this study sought to answer the following: What are the reasons for smiling? What motivates Filipinos to smile in social interactions? And what attitude does the Filipino display by smiling? This determined how intense the attitude of Filipinos towards smiling was experienced by the respondents. It is noted that there are three attitudes that rose in this study. These are optimistic, appreciative, and sympathizers. Student-respondents used to smile to attract people and to appreciate God’s creation, while faculty-respondents used to smile to inspire others in the professional aspect. These are amazingly eminent to the respondents in this study. This concludes that cultural, social, and individual differences influence others by smiling. A smile also influences how people interpret events that make them happy. Also, it shapes the ambiance in different roles that define social interaction whenever they smile. Differences among the respondents do not alter people's innate and universal tendency to smile when they are happy. Thus, this study recommends creating activities to practice smiling in different situations in life.