WebMD Medical News Laura J. Martin, MD Nov. 11, 2011 -- Go ahead
and smile. It may be Mother Nature's way of giving you a
youthful appearance. A new study showed that when people looked
at photos of happy faces, they guessed the age of the person in
the photo as younger than in photos of the same person with a
neutral or angry expression. Researchers say it's the first
study to show that facial expressions have a major impact on the
accuracy and bias of age estimates. The study is published in
Psychology and Aging. "Although age estimates can often be based
on multiple cues, there are many situations in which a picture
of a person's face is the only information that is immediately
available," researcher Manuel C. Voelkle of the Max Planck
Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and colleagues write.
"In particular, with the rise of private- or business-related
social networks like Facebook, flickr, LinkedIn, and many
others, it has become common practice to share pictures, often
without additional backgrou