Opposites may not attract, but doubles do.
Doppelganger fun – The German word for a virtually similar doppelganger, the term “doppelbanger” is used to describe couples who look alike, and now there is a scientific explanation for his or her attraction.
In reality, people are more attracted to those who look like them a new study published in Evolution and Human Behavior.
Researchers on the University of Queensland in Australia recruited 682 heterosexual participants and recorded a complete of two,285 speed dating interactions within the lab.
About half of the interactions were with partners of the identical ethnic group and the opposite half with partners of various ethnic groups.
Participants interacted in three-minute speed-dating-like rounds before completing a questionnaire to assess their partner’s facial attractiveness and perceived friendliness.
The study found that folks with similar facial expression rated one another as more attractive. Participants of the identical ethnic group were more likely to consider themselves more attractive than those of a distinct ethnic group.
Nevertheless, ethnicity didn’t appear to influence friendliness rankings, as individuals with similar facial expression rated one another as more kinder, whether or not they belonged to the identical ethnic group or not.
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“Some have suggested that long-term shared lifestyles lead to a convergence of physical similarity, but there may be mixed evidence regarding this possibility,” the researchers noted.
Nevertheless, the once-held theory that married couples start to look alike after years of being together — which emerged on the University of Michigan in 1987 — appears to have been disproved in 2020. research from Stanford University.
“Alternatively, facial similarity in pairs could possibly be the results of a romantic partner’s preference for facial similarity,” the researchers wrote.
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Experts also imagine their findings to be true, claiming that having the same appearance triggers an instinctive sense of kinship, causing people to feel comfortable, familiar and belonging to those who look like themselves.
The study also found that facial expression considered more masculine were positively related to attractiveness for men and negatively for ladies.
Psychologists interpreted their findings as evidence of “a genetic basis for what faces we discover attractive”, noting that “preferences for certain facial expression have potentially evolved due to the fitness advantages signaled by these traits.”
But this is just not the primary study of dopplebangers and masculine and female characteristics.
Norwegian scientists from The colleges of Oslo and Tromsø conducted a study in 2013 where subjects were shown changes of their partner’s face and asked to discover which variety they found most engaging.
“Participants clearly preferred the ‘self-based morph’ (i.e., a partner’s face with a small portion of their very own face blended into it) over other morphs,” the researchers said.
While there may be other researched and “mixed evidence” for a link between face similarity and attractiveness rankings, the researchers consider these new findings credible, noting that almost all other studies have relied on images of real or digitally altered faces, while this new study checked out human interactions .