High School Yearbook Photo Predicts Marriage Success?
Posted on 26 April 2009 by Shout Melissa
A recent study conducted by Matthew Hertenstein associate professor of psychology at DePauw University has found that the “smile intensity” of your High School yearbook or earlier photographs can predict your future marriage (or relationship for sake of argument) success. The intensity of a person’s smile in a yearbook, or other early photograph, predicts whether or not the individual will later divorce, according to this new that identified the seemingly improbable link.
Averaged across the two experiments, he said “the top 10 percent of smilers had a divorce rate of about one in 20, whereas if you were a bottom 10 percent smiler, your chance of divorce was five times more likely!”
While the exact reasons for smiling’s link to divorce remain unclear, the researchers suggest both genetics and the individual’s environment can come into play, with upbeat, stable people conveying a readiness to affiliate, taking better advantage of opportunities and being “more open to social relationships.” Some have commented that a person’s willingness to take direction from a photographer (“Say Cheese”) might also suggest that conformity is also a factor in successful relationships.
The finding adds to a growing body of evidence that smiling behavior in photos, no matter how fleeting, staged or contrived, indicates underlying emotional dispositions that can have direct and indirect consequences throughout the person’s entire life.
As with most academic studies, these findings are not absolute. Just because your partner may have looked a bit like Oscar the Grouch on photo day, doesn’t mean you need run home and start packing. We aren’t all blessed with the ability to take a perfect yearbook photo. (Why do you think I have not included MY yearbook photo in this article?! It was the 90′s. I had a perm. Nothing more to say. At least I was smiling…although I’m not sure why with that haircut!) So the question of the day is… have you seen your partner’s yearbook photo yet? Might be time to go through those boxes in the garage!
For more information on the study visit Discovery.com.
