Can a portrait put you in a better mood?

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. But is that true?

According to a professor of psychology at UC San Diego it is. He studied the influence of images on people’s emotions after being exposed to happy faces and scowling faces as well as the corresponding words. To test people’s reaction, the professor had them drink Kool-Aid immediately after the stimuli. The results were interesting:

The first experiment compared the effect of words that were rated as emotionally positive, like “panda,” or emotionally negative, like “knife,” to the effect of happy and angry facial expressions. The second compared the effect of emotive words with images of emotionally charged objects, such as a gun or a cute dog.

As in previous studies, participants drank more after seeing happy faces than after seeing angry faces. Participants also drank more after seeing positive objects than after seeing negative objects. In contrast, positive words did not increase consumption.

So what does this mean? In a nutshell, images can be powerful for emotional change. If science shows that a few images can change a person’s behavior in just a short amount of time, imagine what they can do over a longer period of time? It’s why I’m so convinced about the power of printing and displaying portraits in the home.

You could be having an awful day: the kids are running behind and now late for the bus, the dog tore up some of the carpet, the grocery store was out of your favorite coffee, you name it. But then, as you walk by the living room to usher your kids out the door, you see your family’s smiling faces and you’re hit with a flash of positive emotion.

When we print portraits and put them out in our homes, we give ourselves the gift of re-experiencing the photographed moment all over again. In turn, seeing those portraits can help us be in a better mood and inspire us to embody the joy brought by the photos. And, who wouldn’t want to see happy faces from time to time anyway?