I don't claim to be the most socially clued-in person in the world, but as an American I hear people say things other than "fine, thanks" in response to "how ar

I don't claim to be the most socially clued-in person in the world, but as an American I hear people say things other than "fine, thanks" in response to "how are you?" all the time and think it's pretty normal. Although it's true that any answer other than "fine" tends to invite a response -- like if I say "yeah, it's been a long day" the other person would probably say something like "well, at least it's nearly over" or something to acknowledge my state before moving on. But still, you can answer the question a number of ways in normal conversation, as long as it's a fairly superficial answer as you say. What trips me up is that in the UK (where I'm living currently) it seems like it's pretty common to ask "Are you alright?", which in the US means something like "You look terrible, is anything the matter?" but in the UK seems to be more or less equivalent to "How are you?"