Smile, you might Live Longer

People who smile will live longer? This might now be true.

According to the Los Angeles Times and Researchers at Wayne State University conducted a study, using information from the Baseball Register. They looked at photos of 230 players who began their careers in professional baseball before 1950.

What they did next was enlarge the players’ pictures and rated their smiles, big smile, no smile, or partial smile. Then the smile rating were compared with data from deaths that occurred from 2006 through 2009. To be as accurate as possible, the researchers accounted for other factors associated with living longer like body mass index, career length, and college attendance.

So what they found was this:  According to the LATimes and the reachers, the players who had died, their longevity ranged from an average 72.9 years for players with no smiles to 75 years for players with partial smiles to 79.9 years for players with big smiles. In other words, smiling added about seven years on their lives.

The researchers in the LATimes article claim this is no joke. Smiles reflect positive emotion which has been linked to both physical and mental well-being.

This study is published in the journal Psychological Science.