Scientists say that it is possible to predict whose marriage will succeed or fail, based entirely
on pictures from your childhood from as young as age 5.
According to an article in The Daily Mail, the study found that “Those with the brightest smiles are more than three times as likely to have a strong marriage than those who frown their way through family outings as a child or teenager.”
The scientists from DePauw University in Indiana studied 650 adults aged 21-87, rating their photos for the brightness of their smiles from their final year of school.
The researchers then asked the volunteers about their marital history to study if one variable affected the other.
Their findings?
According to the Daily Mail article, “Those with the weakest smiles were more than three times as likely to have been through a divorce than those who beamed their way through their teenage years”
A second study, using photos taken when participants were as young as five years old, confirmed the results.
Smiling kids have a lower chance of divorce.
Why?
Researchers have several theories. One theory is that happy people tend to marry other happy people and they’re, well, happier. Another theory is that happy people may be more likely to work through trouble in a relationship. And finally, some researchers theorize that happiness is actually contagious.
There is some research to back up the contagious happiness theory, found a study by Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. According to Fowler, “If a social contact is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15 percent.”
Fowler said, “A friend of a friend, or the friend of a spouse or a sibling, if they are happy, increases your chances by 10 percent.”
And, according to their findings, even a friend thrice removed – a friend of a friend of a friend increases your happiness by 6%.
The lesson? Make sure you check out your date’s photo album before things get serious. And if you’re already involved with a childhood non-smiler, at the very least, surround yourself with happy people.
Lisa
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Dating Coach and Relationships Expert Lisa Daily is the bestselling author of two dating books, Stop Getting Dumped!, How to Date Like a Grownup and the totally funny novel Fifteen Minutes of Shame. You???ve seen her everywhere from Entertainment Tonight to the HITCH movie DVD.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hello Lisa,
Please help. I am 40 years old and I just started dating a man my age. His previous girlfriend moved to a different state and they are no longer dating but she is still calling him. She is aware that he is now dating me and we have had some not so pleasant words. The problem is, she is still calling him. What is really going on? Please help. I am to old for this. Thanks.