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From Good Cheer to "Drive-By Smiling": A Social History of Cheerfulness

This paper attempts to outline the social history of cheerfulness using the constructivist perspective on emotions. The role of cheerfulness in American society grew in relation to modern ideological frameworks and various economic and social factors. Embraced by the middle class since the eighteenth century for reasons of social identity and philosophical outlook, cheerfulness became a national emotional standard perceived by outsiders of the culture as part of the American character. It was fostered by a tradition of optimism, self-reliance and self-centeredness. Being socially and individually beneficial, it was cultivated in the Victorian family. In the industrial age, cheerfulness was found to be economically productive and was administered in the workplace by the managerial leadership. The lower classes engaged in it through the job market and other social pressures. Cheerfulness escalated in business and corporate culture with competition. Thus, it proved to be the most useful of emotions in an increasingly rational culture and was individually sought and socially encouraged until it became the emotional highlight of the American social landscape. In late capitalism cheerfulness has been commodified, commercialized and recycled by media, possibly with some repercussions on depression.