Source: www.nytimes.com
NEW YORK, USA, December 14, 2009: Say cheese and stay married? Yes, according to Matthew Hertenstein, a psychology professor at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind. He and three colleagues recruited more than 600 people for a review of their college yearbook photos. The researchers rated the yearbook smiles by coding muscle movements around the mouth and the eyes.
The researchers found a surprising correlation: the less people smiled, the more likely they were to later divorce. The effect was statistically significant, though not huge. But when Hertenstein compared the top 10 percent of brightest smilers with the bottom 10 percent of weakest smilers, the “lowest were five times more likely to be divorced than the top.”
The why of the smiling effect remains elusive. Hertenstein acknowledges potentially “dozens” of possible explanations, going with perhaps the most straightforward and benign. He says his “gut inclination is that people who smile on average in their photos have a positive disposition that serves them well in life and relationships.”