Smiling across borders: Host culture members' reactions to happiness expressed by immigrants

Smiling is widely recognized for facilitating interpersonal relationships, yet its effects in intergroup, non-cooperative contexts remain underexplored. Across four experiments and six samples (N_total = 2074) in Spain and the US, we explored how displays of happiness by immigrants from various ethnocultural groups (vs. non-immigrants) influence host culture members' emotions, perceptions, social interaction and avoidance intentions and helping intentions. Results showed that representations of smiling immigrants were associated with higher perceptions of warmth and competence, eliciting positive emotions like joy, admiration and feeling moved, while reducing negative emotions like anger. Host culture perceivers were more willing to engage with, and less likely to avoid, smiling immigrants, largely due to increased perceptions of warmth and likability. However, these representations did not significantly increase helping intentions. The role of group membership of the expresser in moderating these effects was limited. The findings suggest that immigrants' displays of positive emotions in awareness-raising social campaigns and mass media could serve as a counter-strategy to prevalent negative stereotypes. However, our research also indicates that host societies may condition the acceptance and naturalization of immigrants on the emotions they express, their perceived 'successful' adaptation or demonstrated agency.