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MOSCOW, November 6, Salma Sultanova. Opposites attract, many believe. However, research shows that this is far from the case. Who really attracts us, what is important when choosing partners and friends — in the material .
In search of yours
Beauty and the Beast, Romeo and Juliet, Rose and Jack from the film «Titanic» convinced the public that the school bully would certainly fall in love with a modest excellent student, and the first beauty of the school would eventually marry a quiet and inconspicuous guy. In fact, everything is much more complicated.
In 1963, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology published an articlewith the results of one study. Scientists surveyed 36 married couples. The questions were designed to understand religious and political views, as well as personal attitudes. It turned out that the spouses answered more or less the same.
In 1971, American psychologist Don Byrne put forwardhypothesis: we intuitively sympathize with like-minded people. People with similar views give us positive feelings and give us confidence that our ideas are correct. This is what creates attraction. Moreover, when assessing similarity, we rely on both demographic criteria — age, race, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status — and psychological ones: personal characteristics, values, interests, religion, education, profession.
Hypothesis the fact that similar people are drawn to each other, and external data does not always come first when choosing a soulmate, received more and more confirmation. So, University of Kent employees Clyde Hendrick and Stephen Brown decided to checkwho attracts introverts. Scientists compiled a questionnaire to which answers were given in advance on behalf of an introvert and an extrovert. Participants had to mark their favorite ones. The experiment showed that introverts choose extroverts as company at a party and pay tribute to their leadership qualities. But when it comes to friendship, ethics, honesty, they prefer each other.
In 1991, American scientists published a research based on a survey of students living in a dormitory. The experiment involved 30 pairs of roommates attending the same college. Equally women and men. They were randomly paired into same-sex couples and asked to live together for six months. At the end of the period, the participants were surveyed, and it turned out that neighbors who were similar in appearance and character, and also considered each other attractive, got along better.
Stick to your own
According to new data, not only the similarity of people brings people together, but also vice versa : The closer the relationship between people, the more similar they become to each other. This was shownAmerican scientists in a series of experiments. First, three thousand volunteers were asked about their views and political preferences. Participants also shared their opinions about their friends, who were also included in the sample. Participants expressed how well they knew and trusted them. The result showed that those who considered themselves friends had the same personal qualities, worldview, attitudes, values, prejudices and behavioral characteristics.
In the following studies, the authors selected several groups of friends and divided them. Participants had to start talking to strangers and spend some time with them. After that, they filled out an anonymous questionnaire, where they answered honestly whether they would like to continue communicating with these people or not. At the end of the experiment, it turned out that the participants had much more similarities with their friends than with random interlocutors. Moreover, regardless of how long the friends knew each other.
In 2017, American and British researchers released an article, where they talked about the results of monitoring people on social networks. The authors analyzed responses from nearly three hundred thousand users from a popular psychological testing app. This information was used to train statistical models that were supposed to create personal profiles of users based on their likes and statuses.
“For example, people who like Salvador Dali or meditation, as a rule, are more open to new experiences. And extroverts write a lot about parties or weekends. The advantage of our approach is that we evaluate each person more objectively,” the press service of the Association quotes Psychological Sciences Youyou Wu from Cambridge and Northwestern Universities, the lead author of the study.
The scientists' hypothesis was confirmed: when analyzing the characteristics between the participants, their friends and romantic partners, similarities were found. The highest correlation for likes was observed among couples in love.
September 13, 16:33
But Australian and British experts decided to conduct an experiment exclusively with the participation of strangers. Scientists selected 682 people and organized speed dates for them. As a result, participants recognized those who are similar to them in appearance as the most attractive potential partners.
In a recent study published in Nature Human Behavior, scientists analyzed the views of nearly eighty thousand romantic couples and identified 133 personality traits — such as political views, religiosity, bad habits, height, weight, and mental disorders. Among partners, agreement ranged from 82 to 89 percent. The couples generally had the same views and educational levels. Heavy smokers, alcoholics and teetotalers also formed alliances with others like themselves. Differences were observed in height, weight, health problems and some character traits. Extroverts, for example, did not engage in relationships with other extroverts any more than introverts. Even the year of birth and the number of sexual partners often coincided.
«Relationships are like tossing a coin. Even in situations where we feel we have a choice, there may be processes going on behind the scenes that we are not fully aware,” Tanya Horwitz, a graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder and lead author of the study, told The Guardian.
The authors note that this trend could have consequences. For example, according to Horwitz, the more people of the same height who have offspring, the more extreme tall people there will be in society. The situation is the same with mental disorders.