By analyzing the intensity of people's smiles in the photos, the fate of their future relationships can be predicted – to, will anyone get divorced, will he manage to build a happy and lasting relationship. DePauw University researchers argue, that this rule already applies to photos of 5-year-old children (Motivation and Emotion). The Americans asked approx. 650 adults aged from 21 do 87 years to provide photos from the last year of school education. Then they began assessing the smiles. Place assigned on the scale “the width of a smile” compared with the answer to the question about past divorces. The intensity of smiling was predictable, whether study participants divorced at any point in their lives. The less someone smiled, he was more likely to divorce afterwards. Turned out, that the people with the weakest smile were divorced three times more often.
The obtained results were confirmed by the second experiment, in which photos of 5-year-old children were used. Scientists guess, that optimists try harder to work through difficulties encountered in relationships, besides, they tend to marry equally cheerful people. An explanation cannot be ruled out either, that joy in life is contagious, which means that the partners quarrel less often or are able to come to an agreement.
