Stop forcing that workplace smile

Meredith Bennett-Smith doesn't force a smile when she goes into the office to work at her job as the deputy politics editor for Quartz.

"When I'm sitting at my desk I don't feel the need to pretend to be happy if I'm stressed, or pretend to be happy if I'm on a deadline," she says.

"When I'm in meetings … I'm not going to force my face to pretend to be happy because I think that will make people more comfortable."

It's a conclusion the New York journalist has reached after finding that pretending to be happy at work was taking a mental toll on her — and finding research that suggests negative emotions can actually be useful for some work tasks.
 
Bennett-Smith says a "corporate cult of positivity" exists nowadays, with many employers thinking that happy, optimistic employees are more productive.

She said while there may be some truth to that, other emotions shouldn't be discounted.

Being grumpy can have advantages

For example, a study out of the University of New South Wales found that grumpy people are better than happier people at coping with more demanding tasks.

Professor of psychology Joseph Forgas got volunteers in either a good or bad mood by dwelling on positive or negative emotions, and then made them do a series of tasks including judging the truth of urban myths.

Those who were in a bad mood were better at communicating and thinking critically.

Other studies have found that people who are angry were more likely to discriminate between weak and strong arguments than people in a neutral mood, and that anger can also foster increased creativity.

There is a large mass of studies that show various different aspects of grumpiness can be beneficial in a variety of ways. They can have an effect on your critical thinking, and your analytical thinking, they can have a positive effect on thinking outside of the box and ideation, and then can have just a positive effect on your long-term work-life balance and preventing burnout.- Meredith Bennett-Smith

Bennett-Smith, who wrote about this research as part of Quartz's series The Happiness Experiment, says there is a lot of research that shows that forcing oneself to be happy and suppressing negative emotions can be harmful.

"For one thing it leads to burnout, and burnout is going to cut down on your productivity. So if the goal of the company policy ... was to increase productivity, this is going to have the opposite effect."

She says the benefits of being grumpy, and consequently more analytical, are particularly relevant for her work as an editor and journalist. 

But she has felt the pressure to be happy at work — and the negative effects that came with it. 

The fake, emotional cheerfulness was harmful to me personally. It's very tiring and it's unnecessary. Who is this benefiting?- Meredith Bennett-Smith

She says that if people are naturally cheerful and bring that to work, that's definitely fine. 

"What I push back on a little bit is this idea that you must be positive even when you don't feel positive, and that there's some kind of requirement of emotional cheerfulness that we all need to meet at all times."