A new study says there’s a reason some people annoy you, which is sort of a relief

Some people are just the absolute worst. It doesn’t matter if they smile at you or hold the door open, sometimes there just an inexplicable reason that their cheerfulness is getting on your nerves, even if you aren’t sure why. Now thanks to science, your dislike of your co-worker or friend’s roommate is completely justified. A new study says there are reasons some people annoy you. Basically, it all comes down to biology when you’re irritated by overly cheerful people. A new study published in the Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes  journal conducted six experiments that found overly cheerful people get the shaft from others.

The researchers did experiments with people who were observed as ‘very happy’ were cheated by the participants more than those who were self described as ‘moderately happy’.

In one experiment, the researchers gave the moderately happy people a chance to make money off of their peers by giving them biased advice. Think, the girl at the makeup counter who works on commission and swears that shade of blue lipstick looks good on you (maybe it does, right?). The happier the “customer” was, the more the other people gave them biased information (or straight up lied).

They also found that the test subjects were much more likely to choose a super happy people as a negotiation partner in a separate study. So what gives?

According to the study, we read overly happy people as naive. Perky people make us feel like they aren’t grounded in reality and can be taken advantage of better, so others are more likely to trick or cheat them, thinking that there are no consequences.

So be friendly, but not too happy when you’re trying to split the bill with your co-workers, just in case. Or feel however you want, happy people don’t mind picking up the tab sometimes, so either way, it’s all good.