A new study published in a recent Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin says we tend to be attracted to people who look like ourselves. Ew. Creepy. Not creepy? Narcissistic?
The study these findings were based on had subjects look at images of themselves morphed with a a stranger, or images of just a stranger. When asked who was hotter, the subjects usually chose the picture that was a morphing of them and someone else.
So, let me get this straight? When matching women to myself, I’m probably going to choose a girl who kind of looks like me? Wow. What a weird thought.
The explanation put forth by researched ad deCODE Genetics in Rekjavik makes perfect sense. It’s actually not narcissism that drives us to do this, it’s genetic compatibility. If we’re clicking on profiles of women that look like us on lesbian dating websites, it probably comes from that part of us that thinks we can make better babies with them (even though, well, as lesbian women, we, ahem, can’t make babies together.)
Research conducted by deCODE has demonstrated that while first-cousin couples have inbreeding issues, third and fourth cousin couples actually have ideal reproduction. The particular degree of genetic similarity between third and fourth cousins apparently makes for great babies. Couples that are too far removed form each other, on the other hand, might have genetic incompatibilities. Since many of use lived in smaller communities where the most distant people we could hook up with would probably be our fourth cousins, this makes total sense from an evolutionary perspective.
It would be interesting to see if similar studies on lesbian women and gay men had the same results.
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