Does Smiling Determine Marital Success?

There’s a study out that looks at the correlation between smiling and divorce rates. In a nutshell, the study found that people who didn’t smile or smiled “weakly” in their photos (looking mainly at college yearbook and childhood photos) were more likely to experience divorce later on in life.

The top 10 percent of smilers had a 5.5 percent rate, while 27 percent of the bottom 10 percent of smilers were divorced. Only 55 people participated in the childhood photo study, making it too small to analyze reliably, but the pattern seemed to hold.

“The bottom-line finding is that people who smiled more stayed together, people who smiled less were more likely to get divorced,” says Matthew Hertenstein, an associate professor of psychology at DePauw who led the study.

But—and this is a very big but—“the huge caveat to this is that there are individual differences,” Hertenstein says. “We found many people who smiled a lot and got divorced, and we found many people who frowned who stayed married and had good relationships.

You really don’t need to go and pull out your spouse’s yearbook and childhood photos to determine whether or not you’re marriage will last. It is an interesting correlation but as my college professors were always fond of saying, “correlation does not mean causation!”

But what does this mean for your child’s future marriage? Again, you don’t need to go and examine your kids’ pictures and analyze how they are smiling, but you can help encourage your child to be aware of their own emotions:

• Help children to think about how other people are feeling.

• Let children know that they have control over their emotions. One good question: Do you want this to be a happy day or a sad day?

• Give children strategies to learn how to regulate their emotions. If Joey won’t share the toy, help think of good alternatives.

I think all in all happiness begets happiness. People are drawn to happiness. Smiling is contagious. And like Louis Armstrong sings to us “When you’re smilin’, the whole world smiles with you!”

Trying smiling at your husband today, just because. I think it will not only brighten his day, but yours as well!

Research source: U.S. News & World Report
H/T: thinkmarriage. org blog

Photo Credit: stock.xchng