UPI – There’s an adage that in romantic relationships, opposites attract. Now, a large, new study confirms that just like many old sayings, it’s wrong.
In an analysis of about 200 studies involving millions of couples, researchers came to the conclusion that there is little behind the claim that opposites attract. If anything, the one about birds of feather flocking together is much closer to the truth.
When it came to the hundreds of “traits” the study analysed partners were almost always more alike than different.
It was only in relation to three per cent of traits that people tended to pair off with someone who had different inclinations, according to the findings published recently in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. To be fair to the adage, the findings do not mean that people rarely find themselves attracted to someone who is much different from them.
“We looked at cohabiting and co-parenting couples,” explained lead researcher Tanya Horwitz, a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. “So, this study speaks to long-term relationships.” On average, the findings show, long-term partners are similar in a host of ways – from religious and political beliefs, to educational background and certain aspects of intelligence, to lifestyle habits.
The results are based on data from 199 published studies involving millions of male-female couples, dating as far back as 1903. The researchers also did their own analysis of data from the UK Biobank, an ongoing research project that is collecting health and genetic information from about 500,000 British adults.
In all, the researchers looked at over 150 “traits,” assessing how often couples were in step on each. And for 82 per cent to 89 per cent of those traits, partners were clearly more likely to be similar than different.
Among the traits where couples were most strongly aligned were political and religious beliefs, education level and certain IQ measurements. Then there were personality traits – where, Horwitz said, there’s been less certainty as to whether opposites attract or repel.
Overall, the study found, partners did tend to be more alike than different on the “big 5” personality traits (extroversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism). But the correlations were not as strong as those for factors like political or religious attitudes. – Amy Norton
