Why do Americans smile so much? Marco Goran Romano November 11, 2023, 10:02 AM ET This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. In 2016, my colleague Olga Khazan saw a cultural difference playing out on the faces of those around her. “Here’s something that has always puzzled me, growing up in the U.S. as a child of Russian parents,” she wrote. “Whenever I or my friends were having our photos taken, we were told to say ‘cheese’ and smile. But if my parents also happened to be in the photo, they were stone-faced. So were my Russian relatives, in their vacation photos. My parents’ high-school graduation pictures show them frolicking about in bellbottoms with their young classmates, looking absolutely crestfallen.” Were her Russian relatives simply less happy than her American friends? Not necessarily, it turns out: Research suggests that some societies view casual smiling as …