Interesting post by Frank Pasquale (Seton Hall): Ten Smiles Per Hour: Tax on the Dour?:

[W]e shouldn’t discount the role of happy cultures in creating happy people; as Barbara Ehrenreich has noted, perhaps the rise in rates of depression "can be connected with the decline in opportunities for pleasure, such as carnival and other traditional festivities." Some theorists of discrimination might argue that government intervention to change a sticky norm of unfriendliness amounts to a tax on the dour. Why are they being forced to affect sentiments they don’t authentically feel? But I think the problem has less to do with "faking it" than with the systematic substitution of, say, well-founded dread with carefree bonhomie.