A quirky new study looks at smiles in pictures of baseball players and compares death rates. What did they find? The bigger the smile, the longer the life!
Past research shows that people who smile a lot are usually happier, have more stable personalities, more stable marriages, better cognitive skills and better interpersonal skills.
Science has just uncovered another benefit of a happy face. People who have big smiles live longer.
Researchers at Wayne State University used information from the Baseball Register to look at photos of 230 players who began their careers in professional baseball before 1950.
The players’ photos were enlarged, and a rating of their smile intensity was made (big smile, no smile, partial smile). The players’ smile ratings were compared with data from deaths that occurred from 2006 through 2009. The researchers then corrected their analysis to account for other factors associated with longevity, such as body mass index, career length, career precocity and college attendance.
For those players who had died, the researchers found longevity ranged from an average of 72.9 years for players with no smiles (63 players) to 75 years for players with partial smiles (64 players) to 79.9 years for players with big smiles (23 players).
This isn’t a bunch of psycho-hooey, the authors said.
Smiles reflect positive emotion. Positive emotion has been linked to both physical and mental well-being. They added a caveat to their study: “The data source provided no information as to whether expressions were spontaneous or in response to a photographer’s request to smile.” Still, big smiles are more likely to reflect true happiness than partial smiles.
Maybe the non-smilers were thinking about batting averages.
The study is published in the journal Psychological Science and discussed in a news release from the journal.
By the way, if this topic is of interest to you, you may want to read a copy of one of my newest books, 10 Essentials of Happy, Healthy People.

• You can order an autographed copy here.
• You can view the Table of Contents here.
• You can read the Forward here.
• You can read Chapter One here.
• You can download a free Reader’s Study Guide here.