“Prom queens live on average five years longer than regular people. It’s probably because they smile a lot, and smiling has been proven to ward off diseases.” On last week’s episode of Glee, Quinn’s reasons for wanting to win prom queen with Finn made us question Brittany’s status as the dumb blonde cheerleader. Smiling won’t make you live longer…or will it?
Fun fact: studies show that smiling may extend a person’s life span. What? It’s true. Optimistic people are more likely to live longer, happier lives than their pessimistic peers. According to a nine-year study in the Netherlands, pessimists will die of heart disease and other ailments before optimists. This makes sense, if you think about it. If you have a positive attitude, you are less likely to be depressed and more likely to work hard, have better jobs, make more money, and have happier marriages.
Unfortunately, being “happy” isn’t necessarily enough. Two professors at Wayne State University analyzed baseball players’ smiles in head shots to determine if there was a difference among the effects of smile intensity on longevity. (The chose baseball players because they had access to athletes’ detailed life statistics—birth, death, education, marital status, etc.) After studying 230 different photographs, the professors found that there are three different “intensities”: no smile, partial smile, and full smile. What they found was nothing short of eerie: players with full smiles lived almost two years longer than the average American. The ‘no smile’ group averaged life spans two years shorter than the ‘partial smilers’. Weird, huh?
Longevity isn’t the only thing that you can determine from your smile: your chances of getting divorced, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status can also be analyzed by studying your smile.
So how do we know if we are happy enough to live longer, healthier lives? First of all, you can’t try to be happy. Instead, put all your energy and attention into some activity that you enjoy. Engagement bypasses pessimism. When you’re fully engaged in something you enjoy, it distracts you from rumination—the destructive pattern of endlessly obsessing over problems that lead to bad moods. Some examples: join a fitness class, such as yoga, kickboxing, or spin; keep a journal and write about good things that happen during the day; spend more time with friends and family; listen to absorbing music or watch a feel-good movie; start an artistic project, like making a scrapbook, knitting, or painting. Whatever floats your boat.
So smiling and a positive attitude can actual have health benefits. Cool. Looks like Quinn isn’t such a dumb blonde after all.