Men smiling broadly in 1952 pictures lived 7 years longer than the glum ones.
Players' pictures were taken from the 1952 Baseball Register, a listing of professionals that is packed with statistics such as year of birth, body mass index, marital status and career length, which reflects physical fitness.
The wealth of statistics allowed the researchers to control for other factors that could affect lifespan.
Of the players who had died as of June 1 last year, those in the no-smile category lived for an average of 72.9 years, those with partial smiles -- just the mouth involved -- died at age 75, while the full-smile players lived to the ripe old age of 79.9 on average, the study showed.
The broader your smile and the deeper the creases around your eyes when you grin, the longer you are likely to live, according to the study published in Psychological Science.
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