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Have you ever been to a family reunion and noticed that your cousin’s spouse looks more like their twin than their partner? Do you have an aunt or uncle who’s related to you by marriage but blends into the family anyway?
Here’s the theory behind why so many couples seem to look alike. Man, relationship science is so freaky sometimes.
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You might have heard the old adage that shared emotions lead to shared features. That’s exactly what researchers at the University of Michigan concluded decades ago when they studied photos of white, heterosexual newlywed couples over a period of 25 years.
Still, there’s a whole lot more to doppelgänger couples than just sharing the same laughs and heartbreak together. What about the couples who haven’t been dating for that long but truly look like mirror images of each other?
Scientists have another explanation, and it’s a lot more uncomfortable than the first one.
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As it turns out, we might hold truer to Sigmund Freud’s mega-awkward theory that we date people who remind of us our parents than previously thought. One study showed that when shown a series of faces of the opposite sex, participants were more likely to rate them as attractive when flashed a photo of their opposite sex parent beforehand.
Another study in 2018 tested this theory on biracial folks. It found that:
“Although biracial adults were more likely to pair with and be attracted to others who resembled their parents compared to those who did not, the sex of the parent was largely inconsequential.”
Basically, we’re biologically compelled to find people who look like home.
Is this a product of nature or nurture? According to scientists, it’s still pretty hard to say. The advent of online dating presents an interesting twist to these findings. According to Pew Research, 17% of American couples in 2015 were interracial. That’s a pretty huge jump from a measly 7% in 1980.
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Further dating research might give us a more in-depth view of the way we scientifically approach attractiveness. Just because our partner doesn’t share the same racial makeup with our parents doesn’t mean that they don’t resemble them in other ways.
But here’s a truism that science can’t quantify: there’s not ONE thing everybody does when selecting a soul mate. Perhaps we’ll better understand the science behind attraction as time and research progress, and maybe that’ll help bring down divorce rates and make partnerships last longer.
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Have you ever dated someone who looks like one of your parents? What was your experience like? Was it a conscious decision, or did you just wake up in a revelatory cold sweat one day?
Don’t be shy, now. We’ve all had questionable parts of our dating history.
Share with us in the comments below!
