This proverb does not exist by chance! A new study by researchers in Queensland (Australia) has shown that in love, we are more attracted to partners who look like us.
THE proverb ” Birds of a feather flock together » makes sense with this news study published within Evolution and Human Behavior. Conducted by Australian researchers from the University of Queensland, it reveals that we are more often attracted by romantic partners who look like us.
The main author is a student, Amy Zhao, from the UQ School of Psychology. The latter studied hundreds of heterosexual participants through short sessions of speed dating.
Nearly half of interactions were with partners of the same ethnicity
” Our experiment was conducted on 682 participants and through 2,285 speed-dating interactions where people of the opposite sex were invited to interact for 3 minutes each time “, explained Amy Zhao.
” After each interaction, participants rated each other’s attractiveness in terms of faces and personality “.
” We then analyzed their facial images to estimate similarities between partners “, completes the researcher.
The study showed that almost half of the interactions took place with partners of the same ethnicity and the other half with partners of different ethnicities.
“Faces that look like us elicit a sense of kinship that makes people feel comfortable”
” We found that participants were more attracted to partners who had faces that were geometrically similar to theirs. added Amy Zhao.
Participants also tended to be more attracted to partners of the same ethnicity.
According to Amy Zhao, this is the first study to assess face-to-face interactions where participants rated themselves in person.
” Our results suggest that faces that look alike elicit a sense of relatedness, leading people to feel comfortable, familiar with, and choose people who look like them for their love lives. concludes the scientist.
Results that are not surprising. It has already been established that even if mores and social mixing have evolved considerably over the past 30 years, a large majority of couples continue to form according to principles ” endogamy and social and cultural homogamy “. In other words, we tend to choose a partner from the same social group, approximately the same age (even if this rule fortunately does not apply to all couples).
” We know that the psychological tendency to conformism to correspond to a norm is a factor that remains particularly strong, both on the individual level, when in the formation of a couple. “, confirms to us on his side Sébastien Garnero, Dr in Psychologyclinical psychologist, sexologist, psychotherapist and teacher at the University of Paris.