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

No need for a crystal ball.

Peer into the future through your own youthful visage — suggests new research published in the journal Social Science & Medicine , revealing high school yearbook photos to be a reliable indicator of lifespan.

Researchers were interested in exploring the impact of attractiveness on longevity, particularly as 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.

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

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

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

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Results showed that pictured students who scored lowest on the attractiveness scale showed a significantly higher hazard of mortality than those with average and high attractiveness — by as much as 16.8%.

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

“People who were rated as the least attractive based on their yearbook photos live shorter lives than others,” Sheehan told PsyPost . “Also, and interestingly, we found no real advantage of the most attractive rated people compared to everyone else something which surprised both of us. That is, it is really more of an unattractive penalty more so than an attractiveness advantage, at least for longevity in this cohort of Wisconsin high school graduates.

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

“These findings really stress more equitable treatment of people, regardless of their looks,” Sheehan concluded.

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