Chapter 1: Why do couples often look alike?
Why do couples often look alike? You may remember we talked about whether or not opposites attract in a recent episode of Do You Really Know? As it turns out, more often than not, couples tend to share a lot of characteristics, and it's relatively rare for them to be substantially different. When you think about it, it kind of makes sense.
After all, it's often easier to be in a relationship and share your life with someone who sees the world in a similar way. But did you ever consider that on top of that, couples may even share physical characteristics?
Chapter 2: What physical traits do couples tend to share?
For example, you may well have heard someone in the past say that they thought a similar looking couple was a good match, and there are even certain scientific studies to back the idea up. What kind of physical traits are we talking about there? Well, facial features like the eyes, nose and mouth are a prime example.
Back in 2013, a study published in PLOS One found that people consistently ranked photos of their romantic partner as more attractive when the photos had been subtly altered to include some features from their own face. That echoed the findings of a study published in Perception in 2004, which also saw participants asked to rate how attractive they found images of different faces.
In that study, some of the images had been edited to include features that were familiar to the participant. Not only were familiar faces consistently seen as more attractive, but even less familiar faces became more attractive after participants were shown them repeatedly.
So the familiarity effect is definitely worth bearing in mind when thinking about why a person might wind up with a partner who looks somewhat like them. Furthermore, we often meet our partners in places we frequent regularly, like school, work or social circles.
Generally, people from similar backgrounds tend to gravitate towards each other, whether that's in terms of their religion, ethnicity or profession. Do couples tend to look more and more alike with time? That's an idea which has been debated for a long time now.
Initially proposed in 1987, the theory suggests that married couples' facial similarities increase over time due to shared environments and activities. The study behind the theory even found that there was a positive correlation between the phenomenon and marriage quality. But in 2020, Stanford University researchers conducted a comprehensive study
analyzing 517 couples' photos taken within two years of marriage and up to 69 years later. They actually found no evidence supporting the hypothesis. It simply wasn't true that spouses' faces became more similar over time. This challenges the notion of facial convergence.
suggesting instead that facial similarity between spouses is more likely to be a result of initial selection rather than gradual change.
So while dating apps and travel have broadened our options when it comes to romantic partners, it seems that our tendency to seek out the familiar remains strong. There you have it. Now you know why couples often look alike.
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