What your high school yearbook photo says about health and longevity, according to a new study

No need for a crystal ball.

Look into the future through your youthful appearance – suggests a new study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, revealing high school yearbook photos as a reliable indicator of longevity.

The researchers were interested in exploring the impact of attractiveness on longevity, especially since those with conventional good looks are thought to have advantages in life. Previous research has shown that attractive people tend to have it easier thanks to better job prospects, higher earning potential and more friends – all important predictors of good health and happiness.

“I’ve always thought that attraction is an understudied aspect of social inequality,” study author Connor M. Sheehan, an associate professor at Arizona State University, said in a statement. “It may not be as structural as the other dimensions, but everyone knows it’s important.”

While previous studies on the link between attractiveness and health have produced mixed results, the new research aimed to isolate physical appearance from other life expectancy factors, including education level, family background, adult income and history of mental illness. .

The data included a sample of 8,386 individuals who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 and were followed into old age. Their high school portraits were chosen as a baseline indicator of attractiveness and rated on an 11-point scale by six independent male and six female judges, all trained to ensure consistency in their ratings.

The results showed that photographed students who scored the lowest on the attractiveness scale showed a significantly higher risk of mortality than those with average and high attractiveness – up to 16.8%.

Notably, those considered more attractive did no better than those with average scores—suggesting that above-average beauty does not necessarily confer a longer life.

“People who were rated as less attractive based on their yearbook photos live shorter lives than others,” Sheehan told PsyPost. “Also, and interestingly, we found no real advantage of people rated more attractive compared to everyone else, something that surprised us both. That is, it’s really an unattractiveness penalty rather than an attractiveness advantage, at least for longevity in this group of Wisconsin high school seniors.

Sheehan and his colleagues hope to continue this line of research to include more diverse participant groups.

“These findings really emphasize treating people more equally, regardless of their appearance,” Sheehan concluded.