Smiling kids three times more likely to have happy marriages

London, Apr 14 (ANI): Move over crystal balls, tarot cards and horoscopes, the success factor of your marriage may lie in a family album.

That's the conclusion of researchers who claim that kids with the brightest smiles in family photographs are more than three times likely to have a successful marriage than those who frown.

Even snaps taken of family outings when the child is as young as five can show a glimpse of the future, the study revealed.

To reach the conclusion, researchers quizzed almost 650 adults for pictures taken during their final year school and rate the brightness of their smiles.

The scientists, from DePauw University in Indiana, also asked the volunteers, between 21 and 87, whether they had ever been divorced, and subsequently matched their answers with the data on their smiles.

"Smile intensity predicted whether or not participants divorced at some point in their lives," The Telegraph quoted researchers, as saying.

"The less intensely participants smiled, the more likely they would be divorced later in life," they added.

The study, published in the journal Motivation and Emotion, found that those with the weakest smiles were more than three times as likely to have been through a divorce.

A second experiment, which included pictures taken of people as young as five, backed up the conclusion.

According to scientists, people who are generally happier are therefore more likely to try to work through difficulties in relationships and marriages. (ANI)