By: Natasha Archary

Is it too late for unfriendly people to learn how to be more friendly as an adult?
With the Hong Kong government launching a nationwide campaign to encourage citizens to smile more and be more friendly in order to boost the country’s crippling tourism industry, the Drive 959 team believe friendliness can’t be learnt, it’s just something you are or aren’t.
Smiling isn’t what makes someone friendly, it takes more than that, and one would genuinely need to be a people’s person in order to be considered friendly.
Some listeners say being unfriendly or unapproachable can save you from a lot of hardships, particularly if you don’t smile and are not accommodating of people.
Being too friendly is what leads people to take advantage of your good nature, using you to their benefit.
Is a smile all it takes to be more friendly?
Hong Kong has been labelled as a rude country to visit because people who live there never smile.
The country’s hospitality industry is said to be one of the worst due to unfriendly staff who make travelling and exploring Hong Kong a nightmare for keen tourists.
Adopting a 3-pronged approach to become more friendly, Hong Kong is now encouraging citizens to smile in order to make tourists feel more welcome.
But is a smile all it takes to be more friendly? What if someone just fakes a smile?
According to psychologist Richard Wiseman, nearly 60% of adults know the difference between a fake smile and a genuine one because it’s all in the eyes or the area around the eyes to be precise.
As much as “smile lines” are an indication of a good smile, the tiny wrinkles that appear on the corner of the eyes when someone laughs or smiles can’t be faked.
“These are produced by the action of a muscle called the orbicularis oculi, which rings the eye and contracts when people produce genuine, but not polite smiles,” says Dr Paul Ekman, a professor of UC San Francisco who helped develop the Facial Action Coding System to help scientists distinguish between genuine and fake smiles.
Apart from the eyes, the lips pull up naturally when one is smiling genuinely so a fake smile is pretty easy to identify, so it might take more than just a smile to show you’re friendly.
Listen to the conversation on Drive 959:
Also read: “My man refuses to pack away his late wife’s belongings” – The Blind Spot



