"Keep smiling" may not be the best piece of advice or coping strategy for some people after all, suggests new research. 
 
 The researchers found that smiling frequently may actually make people feel worse if they're sort of faking it — grinning even though they feel down. When people force themselves to smile because they hope to feel better or they do it just to hide their negative emotions, this strategy may backfire. 
 
 The bottom line of the study: Whether a wide grin will hurt your emotional well-being depends on the motivation behind it, the researchers said. [Smile Secrets: 5 Things Your Grin Reveals About You] 
 
 "Most commonly, people smile when they are happy, because smiling reflects happiness," said Anirban Mukhopadhyay, an associate professor of marketing at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "However, people also smile when they are unhappy, to mask negative emotion or to try and become happy." 
 
 In the latter scenario, people may associate the acts of smiling not only with feeling happy, but also with feeling unhappy, he said. 
 
 In the study, the researchers conducted three experiments in which they examined how frequently people smiled and the motivation behind their expression. In one experiment, 108 people completed surveys asking them how frequently they smiled on the day of the experiment and whether they thought that people usually smile to feel good or to force themselves to feel good. The participants also completed questionnaires that examined how satisfied they were with their lives. 
 
 In another experiment, the researchers recruited a group of 63 people and showed them funny pictures, which the researchers said they were testing for use in future studies. They asked the participants to smile if they actually found the pictures funny. 
 
 And, in the third experiment, the researchers asked 85 people to list situations in which they smiled because they felt happy. The investigators asked the participants to perform facial muscular exercises in which they were told to manipulate their facial muscles to create a smilelike or non-smilelike shape. Then they examined the participants' level of life satisfaction. 
 
 When the researchers analyzed the results of the three experiments, they concluded that those people in the study who did not typically smile when they were happy felt worse when they smiled frequently, whereas the people who often smiled when they were happy felt better when they smiled frequently. 
 
 "More generally, we think that making people who are feeling bad smile could backfire and make them feel worse, because they may interpret smiling as trying to become happy," Mukhopadhyay said. 
 
 "Smiling frequently would remind them of being not happy," he said, advising that the best strategy in such cases may in fact be not to smile until the negative emotion that is making a person feel bad gets resolved. 
 
 So who should smile as much as possible and who shouldn’t? 
 
 People who smile frequently because of their naturally cheerful personality should feel free to just keep smiling, as this may indeed make them feel better, Mukhopadhyay recommended. However, people who don't naturally grin should remember that, for them, a smile is likely just "an attempt to become happy," he said. 
 
 "In practice, I think people can think about their own beliefs about smiling, see how they feel about how frequently they smile and adapt either their beliefs or their behaviors to make themselves feel better," he said. 
 
 The study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 
 
 Follow Agata Blaszczak-Boxe on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article published on Live Science. ||||| Why smiling won’t help if you are feeling miserable: Experts advise letting unhappiness lift before attempting grin to stop brain linking happy act to sadness 
 
 Smiling when unhappy makes people feel worse because it is just a 'mask' 
 
 Hong Kong professor said forcing a grin makes the brain link it to sadness 
 
 Study suggested waiting for unhappiness to subside before attempting smile 
 
 Next time you think about cheering somebody up when they are upset, perhaps it might be best to just leave them alone. 
 
 Trying to make somebody smile when they are miserable could actually make them feel worse, a study has found. 
 
 If you force a friend to grin when they are in a bad mood then their brain starts to associate it with sadness instead of joy. 
 
 The study found that faking a smile won’t cheer you up because it is just a ‘mask’ to inner sadness (file picture) 
 
 And next time they smile it could bring back miserable memories instead of lifting the bad mood. 
 
 The study suggests that the idea of grinning and bearing it might not be the best solution after all. 
 
 It was carried out by Anirban Mukhopadhyay, an associate professor of marketing at Hong Kong University Science and Technology, who said you should wait until your unhappiness lifts before attempting a grin. 
 
 He said: ‘Making people who are feeling bad smile could backfire and make them feel worse, because they may interpret smiling as trying to become happy. 
 
 ‘Smiling frequently would remind them of being not happy’. 
 
 The research team carried out three experiments: in the first 108 people completed a survey asking how often they smiled and whether they felt good about themselves. 
 
 They also reported how happy they were with their lives in general. 
 
 In the second experiment 63 people were shown funny pictures and were asked if they thought they were amusing. 
 
 If you force someone to grin when they are in a bad mood, their brain starts to associate it with sadness instead of joy, the study by Hong Kong associate professor Anirban Mukhopadhyay found (file picture) 
 
 In the third 85 people were asked to list situations when they felt happy and about their overall life satisfaction. 
 
 They were also asked to perform facial exercises to put their faces in a smile like position. 
 
 The study results showed that if you are faking a smile then it won’t cheer you up and that you are just using it to ‘mask’ your inner sadness. 
 
 Professor Mukhopadhyay wrote: ‘Smiling by itself does not increase happiness, or wellbeing. 
 
 ‘Instead, the belief that one must already be happy when one smiles is what increases happiness, and as a result, wellbeing.’
– If you're subscribing to the old adage of "grin and bear it" to mask negative emotions, you're not doing yourself any favors—we're simply not that easily fooled. Researchers say that over time, fake smiling can actually cause people to associate smiling with feeling unhappy, and that people should instead perhaps forgo a smile until whatever negative emotion they're feeling is resolved, reports Live Science. "Smiling by itself does not increase happiness or well-being," one of the researchers writes in the Daily Mail. For the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers conducted three experiments in which they asked people a range of questions, including how happy they are with their lives, how much they smiled that day, whether they thought people more often smile to feel good or to try to feel good, and in which scenarios they recall smiling from happiness. They concluded that those who smile when happy often feel better as a result, while those who smile when they're not happy often feel worse. (Meanwhile, check out five stars whose perfect smiles are fake.)