Listen up, narcissists. A 2016 study by German scientists shed some light on how people choose significant others, showing that most are likely to be attracted to those who are just like them.
According to the study, “the ability to understand another person’s intentions and emotions is essential for successful social interaction.”
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This is very true because when you are dating someone, you have intense desires to understand your partner’s intentions and where they are emotionally. If you don’t know these things, it can cause a great deal of anxiety in a relationship, all because of uncertainty.
In this study, scientists asked a group of people to watch videos of women and rate their facial expressions. The group was then asked if they wanted to meet any of the women, and if so, how much did they want to?
The results showed that the better the group was able to identify what the women were feeling, the more they felt able to understand the other person.
The study explained: “We found that the more a participant believed he was able to understand another person’s feelings, the more attracted he felt toward that person.”
There is also an evolutionary aspect to attraction. For everyone – humans and animals – we all have the same goal: to reproduce and increase the population. Therefore, “interpersonal attraction has been guided by the view that an individual’s primary goal when evaluating other individuals should be to identify potential mating partners who possess high genetic fitness and fecundity.”
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This study found that when you find the right person, your brain’s reward system is turned on, making you feel good. Neural activity increases, causing emotional attachment, because we like the good feeling it causes.
You may now realize that you and your ex were actually quite similar. It’s no surprise that many celebrity couples have striking similarities, too.
First, Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady may have very different career paths, but their bone structure is very similar. Other twin couples to be added to the list include Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi and her husband Jionni LaValle, Jessica Alba and Cash Warren, and Eva Longoria and her husband Jose Antonio Bastón.
The study also concluded that “the neural mechanisms underlying individual adjustments to interpersonal attraction during social encounters may operate through internal reward signals that are partially independent of external feedback, perhaps making them less vulnerable to cheating by potential cooperative partners.”
