… the more you are likely to look like each other. Both your facial features and expressions.
In a study, psychologist Robert Zajonc and his team showed people photos of couples in their first year and their 25th year together. He then asked the participants to consider how similar the individuals were to each other and the likelihood they were married.
Couples were perceived to look alike, even if the observers don’t know they’re married. The longer the couples had been married the more likely that study participants rated their facial features as similar. By the way, the researchers discounted other causal factors in living together such as their disposition, diet or environment and disposition. Shared empathy seemed to be the main cause for their faces looking more alike over time. Perhaps dehumanization is the opposite emotion.
Two hints: Smiling helps you connect. A majority of people who had a Botox treatment to remove their furrowed brow also felt a lift in their mood.
Speaking, once more, of marriage, here's some mixed news. If a woman is happy in her marriage, then she tends to be healthier than single, divorced or widowed women. If she is unhappy, her health “suffers.” Yet married men are healthier than any kind of single man, regardless of how they feel about the marriage. “Their health seems to improve even if they're in a wretched marriage.”
