What does your smile say?

A professor of psychology, Matthew Hertenstein, did some research to see if by just looking at children's childhood school photographs, he could predict who would get divorced sometime in their lives. To do this he looked at photographs in hundreds of school yearbooks (childhood and adolescent photos) of people who are now 55. With this he saw that children who looked unhappy were the people who got divorced, not like the ones that smiled. Of course many children can fake smiles, so he checked if when the child smiled, the muscle that pulls up the lip was contracted, as well as the orbicularis oculi (because the muscle that makes the smile can be seen in the eye). But Matthew conceded that this is not completely true. The smile, or lack thereof, do not define exactly if your life is going to be one way or another.

I was really surprised when I saw this. I had never thought before that your smile can define (in a way) your future. But I don't agree with this a lot. Everyone can have bad days; you can look horrible in the picture, when actually you were happy. Or you could have had a bad day the day before and then you took the picture and you looked horrible. Or maybe you were always sad but that special person you married made you change and it lasted for ever. I know this is a study and so everything is real, and that a smile can hide many things, but I don't think it can describe our future.