Doomed to unhappy singledom! Via moonjazz @ Flickr.
Today’s “I Can’t Believe Someone Funded That” award goes to the recent study from DePauw University described in CNN’s article “Hunting for the Secrets of a Happy Marriage.” According to the researchers at DePauw’s psych department you can divine your chances for future happiness by checking out your beloved’s childhood school photos, or high school yearbook.
Yes, really.
Surprisingly, a possible clue about whether you stay married or get divorced may be contained in your photo album. Researchers analyzed photos taken in childhood or young adulthood from hundreds of people and rated their expressions on a “smile intensity score.”
The less intensely the subjects smiled, the more likely they would be divorced later in life, while the biggest smilers had lower divorce rates, according to a study published online this month by the journal Motivation and Emotion.
Oh for fuck’s sake. I don’t think you can judge anything from my childhood pictures other than that I spent much of my childhood with bad hair–a bowlcut in the 80s and a fluffy perm in the 90s–and a strong dislike of cameras. As for the intensity of my smile…well, if you were going by school pictures you’d expect me to have a marital track record like Elizabeth Taylor’s. I despised school photos and did not photograph well. I was always nervous in front of the camera because A) my front teeth were crooked and B) I was a slightly awkward nerd who didn’t like performing on command.
Apparently the performing well on command may have something to do with my future chances at matrimony:
“It may be that people who smile in response to a photographer are more obedient people and obedience may help in a marriage. (ed.: Yes, y’all, he went there.) I really don’t know the explanation.”
I really don’t know the explanation either. But I know that ain’t it. Now, granted, he’s not being gender-specific, but I’m sorry, I’m gonna bristle anyway. No one ever tells a man his marriage will go better if he’s obedient. There’s a reason that historically the “love, honor and obey” vow is spoken by women only. If I were going to give him the benefit of the doubt, I’d hope that he meant something more like “co-operative” rather than “obedient.”
If there’s any take-away from this study, it’s than that you should try to marry someone who’s happy, which strikes me as solid, if no-brainer, advice. Whether you can tell if that person is happy by looking at photos taken decades earlier seems iffy to me, and even the so-called experts involved cop to that.
Before you run to check your spouse’s yearbook photo, keep in mind one picture can’t tell the whole story, psychologist Nadine Kaslow said.
“I think the issue really is both getting a sense of a whole set of pictures and also the level of positivity that [people] bring into life and relationships,” she said.
At any rate, let’s be thankful that my yearbooks and school pictures currently reside somewhere in my mom’s basement in Seattle, so I think I’m safe from any future Mr. Sharper trying to judge who I am now from what I looked like then.
One way to debunk studies like this is through anecdotal evidence from anonymous Internet strangers so: my father has never as far as I know smiled with his teeth showing unless he was drunk, because he is self-conscious about his teeth. He and Mom are celebrating 30 years in June.
As for the article, I can’t believe he said that. It makes me angry that it is still acceptable enough to harbor thoughts like “a woman must obey her husband,” let alone say them.
Also: I can’t believe it would be worthwhile to study whether a child negatively impacts a romantic relationship. One thing I especially value in romantic relationships is getting a full night’s sleep and not having sore, milk-heavy breasts: two things that are unlikely to be associated with having an infant. And? Breaking: being bored with your partner doesn’t bode well for the future!
Really? Note to self: when I get rich and donate money to colleges and universities, make sure to include stipulations about how it may be used. If I’d just donated a million dollars and they used it to create and implement a “smile intensity score” on yearbook photos, I’d be more than a little peeved.
@kithkin: Yeah, I didn’t even tackle the other study in that article about young children being tough on a marriage. Because, well, duh. That study is courtesy of the Institute of No Shit.
I realize psychology majors and grad students need to do some kind of study to get their degrees but these are pretty egregiously dumb, IMO.
I was never a smiler, and I still hate cameras with a passion. AND I HAVE NEVER MARRIED!!!eleventy!! I have been SCIENCED!
(It occurs to me that a “Bish, plz” tag might come in handy.)
“unhappy singledom.” Isn’t that redundant!?
I seem to remember that it was Not Cool for guys to smile in photos when I was in high school, particularly driver’s license photos.
I hope no worried woman goes to our yearbook to find someone after reading this study.
Ugh. This reminds me of a study I learned about in Psych 101: They had boys and girls (all below the age of 7) read a book aloud and analyzed the tabor and tone of their voices since there is no scientific difference between the vocal chords of young girls and boys. But the girls’ voices sounded different from the boys because they were SMILING like good little girls when they spoke.
Also, I contend that my school photos may have caught me mid-word or in the “wait just one second” pose, I’m smiling with my eyes, dammit! I can haz happy marriage nao?
*timbre of their voices
I don’t smile with my teeth either, because my teeth and very discoloured and terrible-looking because of the front two being chipped and fake. I’m actually getting them crowned soon less out of cosmetics than a “right now I have great dental insurance and I will not have such forever” and considering whether I’m gonna throw in some bleach so that at least I can minimize my self-consciousness.
And as the Harpies know, I refuse to have my picture taken. I look fine in person, but cameras hate me. Forever and ever, awomen.
I’m warry of the “That study is courtesy of the Institute of No Shit” attitude because knowing something and being able to proove it are two vastly different things in science. A hypothesis might seem obvious, but it doesn’t amount for shit in science if there is no proof.
That being said, this smiling study really tells us nothing. First, in order for any study to be valid, it has to be repeatable by anyone. Until I see the same results from someone else, I find the results highly suspect. Second, this study shows correlation, not causality. In other words, it is likely that children who have unhappy childhoods often end up with problems that affect their marriage later in life, and their unhappy childhood also caused them to be not smiling in their childhood photos. In this case, childhood photos and divorce rates have nothing to do with each other; they only sare a common variable: unhappy childhoods.
The fact that the researcher (or reporter?) tries to make a causility statement based on a correlation is crap. Whomever made the obedience statement needs to be reminded that correlation does not equal causality.
what if you’re like me, and were totally NOT smiling with your eyes? My lips were smiling, but my eyes looked on the verge of tears. Looking at the pics now, the internal pain is sooo obvious to me.
But technically, I was smiling.
What if you were just having some bad days on picture day?
What if the girl in line behind you pinched your right before you got in front of the camera and the photographer started barking his/her demands? “Move to the left, put your arm here, tilt your head a little to the right.. no, a little to the left. now look up.. oh oh! only with your eyes! tilt your head back down… too far..”
Seriously? School pictures amount to crap anyway. You’re sooo frustrated by the time they snap that photo that, at best, you’re grimacing.
“unhappy singledom” is an oxymoron in some cases.