Do the Faces of People In Long-Term Relationships Start To Look the Same? (theguardian.com) 73
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Working with her Stanford colleague, Michal Kosinski, [Pin Pin Tea-makorn, a PhD student at Stanford] scoured Google, newspaper anniversary notices and genealogy websites for photos of couples taken at the start of their marriages and many years later. From these they compiled a database of pictures from 517 couples, taken within two years of tying the knot and between 20 and 69 years later. To test whether couples' faces grew alike over time, the researchers showed volunteers a photo of a "target" person accompanied by six other faces, one being their spouse, with the other five faces selected at random. The volunteers were then asked to rank how similar each of the six faces were to the target individual. The same task was then performed by cutting-edge facial recognition software.
In the original study in 1987, the late psychologist Robert Zajonc, at the University of Michigan, had volunteers rank the photos of only a dozen couples. He concluded that couples' faces became more alike as their marriages went on, with the effect being greater the happier they were. The explanation, psychologists have argued, is that sharing lives shapes people's faces, with diet, lifestyle, time outdoors, and laughter lines all having a part to play. However, writing in Scientific Reports, Tea-makorn and Kosinski describe how they found no evidence for couples looking more alike as time passed. They did, however, look more alike than random pairs of people at the start of their relationship. Tea-makorn said people may seek out similar-looking partners, just as they look for mates with matching values and personalities.
In the original study in 1987, the late psychologist Robert Zajonc, at the University of Michigan, had volunteers rank the photos of only a dozen couples. He concluded that couples' faces became more alike as their marriages went on, with the effect being greater the happier they were. The explanation, psychologists have argued, is that sharing lives shapes people's faces, with diet, lifestyle, time outdoors, and laughter lines all having a part to play. However, writing in Scientific Reports, Tea-makorn and Kosinski describe how they found no evidence for couples looking more alike as time passed. They did, however, look more alike than random pairs of people at the start of their relationship. Tea-makorn said people may seek out similar-looking partners, just as they look for mates with matching values and personalities.
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While there is a non-zero probability that your untestable, undisprovable, theory may right, it's a lot more likely that you have schizophrenia. A known symptom of schizophrenia is coming up with undisprovable, untestable theories alongside imagining non-real people.
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I've grown a moustache lately (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I've grown a moustache lately (Score:5, Funny)
And, as women get older, they start to look more distinguished, like
Women grow moustaches (Score:2)
And men grow breasts...
Mh Ex-Wife (Score:5, Funny)
Never grew a full beard.
But after the divorce she gained the 80+ lbs I lost.
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I suspect that my wife was hoping that we would start looking more like each other, but it didn't happen. She's still gorgeous and I still look like a nerd.
There's a third possible explanation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Various researchers were reported as considering two mechanisms:
- partners' faces age into similarity with time due to shared environmental factors.
- people who look more alike are more likely to marry.
IMHO this misses another possibility:
- Couples who look less alike are more likely to separate (divorce, partner dies, etc.)
Couples who smoke crack together stay together? (Score:1)
That's an interesting thought.
You didn't say whether you had in mind:
People who start out looking very different are less likely to stay together
Or
People who end up looking less alike are less likely to stay together
It occurs to me that both made sense. Maybe when a couple enjoys working out together every morning like my friends doz that brings them closer. Maybe if one was a fitness instructor and the other turned into an morbidly obese couch potato they wouldn't have as much in common - they would look
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My first thought was that couples tend to adopt each other's speech patterns and style so they probably adopt each other's mannerisms and facial expressions too. Maybe they just unconsciously start to mirror the face of the person they spend a lot of time with.
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Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I searched for videos. The ones I found do not sound even close to that, so I assume I did not find the right one. Got an example?
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Got an example? [of the "happy birthday" crow]
Try https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The rooster in the picture is mostly "talking" to the cameraman and not crowing. But there are a number of others - not all bantam doms - crowing in the background. You can hear the call I mean at 26-27 seconds into the clip.
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Mirrors (Score:3)
So people tend to prefer people who look similar to the person they see in the mirror. I wonder would that hold true in earlier societies without mirrors.
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A still surface of water makes a mirror.
You will have a hard time finding a human society earlier than water.
It's your mum dude.. (Score:2)
No really, it's likely Imago Theory -
https://bigthink.com/philip-pe... [bigthink.com]
But I seriously doubt people physical appearance changes through some kind of epigentic process related to their partners appearance. Perception perhaps.
Re:So people are racists? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your definition of racism needs work. Then again, everyone's definition of racism needs work because the word is so flexible it can cover a very broad range of issues.
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I think your definition of racism needs work. Then again, everyone's definition of racism needs work because the word is so flexible it can cover a very broad range of issues.
Very true. Everyone's definition of racism needs work, because term was never meant to be that broad or flexible. The Idiocy Culture today polished that turd, and I guarantee Dr. Martin Luther King didn't fight for those who feel that a rainy day is being "racist" against their fragile sunshine-filled thoughts.
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Not sure if this is a joke or serious.
This kind of argument is used to push all that white genocide crap, the idea that normalizing interracial couples is a deliberate plot to dilute the pure Arian gene pool. Be very careful with it.
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Why is it "natural"?
In fact I've noticed that most people seem to prefer people who don't look like them. Maybe you have heard about the "exotic bonus".
Anyway my parents are different ethnicities, I'm a different ethnicity to my wife, seems pretty natural to me.
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That's because men and women look different.
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It's natural just because it's common? Cars are pretty common but I don't think they are natural.
Seems to be a very odd choice of works frankly.
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I'm different ethnicity/race from my wife too, but it's unusual. None of my older or same generation relatives married outside their race though. Most people at work aren't like that either. For that matter before I met my wife I only dated white women, what a surprise I wound up this way, haha.
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I think the word you are looking for is "common", or even better "not unusual".
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"almost always, about 90%" is more than "common" to me.
Of course, someone can pull that 90% lower if they use "ethnicity" rather than race, but for different race it's about 1 in 10 couples. Just not what most people do. I don't mind being a weirdo. I'm left handed too.
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I guess it depends where you are, some places around here it's way less than 90%.
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There is a "pure gene pool" of followers of Arius [wikipedia.org] in his non-Trinitarian heresy? Well, I'll grant the possibility, but they've kept it quiet and kept their racial purity for a good millennium longer than the Mormons managed, and in the teeth of persecution that would make a Mormon wilt.
I think you mean "Aryan", but in a mythical racial sense, not in a cultural, linguistic or religious sense (I must remember to laugh doubly hard the next time I see a Hungar
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The bias towards our own groups starts at about 6 months. It doesn't limit itself to skin color and can include things as banal as shirt colors.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/... [nbcnews.com]
This helps me keep things in perspective when it comes to others' unconscious bias. It doesn't make them evil, simply... human.
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Because marrying people that look like you is basically racism...
Because you can take damn near any word in the English dictionary and basically distort the living shit out of it.
And if this was meant to be a joke, then look that word up too.
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YAAFM
Of course, because: (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually I often find the resemblance between dogs and their owner... Uncan(ine)ny.
I wonder if there was a study about that?
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Hey, we (the wife and I) are not THAT furry... Of course, when it comes to hunger and snacking, my wife and our dog are pretty indistinguishable, even down to the tail wagging... I tell her that all the time.. She and the Pup are the same, except she/s bigger (120lb vs. 10lb) has less fur and her breath smells a LOT better but those are minor details.
No (Score:1)
Next question.
Tell the pschologists (Score:1)
Your research is bunk not science until its reproduced.
Really depends... (Score:2)
I doubt that would happen with my partner and myself... but then, she was born and raised in China and 4'10", whereas I'm your typical 6'2" North American white male...
Relationships? (Score:2, Funny)
Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard (Score:2)
I remember seeing their resemblance and asking whether they might be brother and sister. Turned out they 've been lovers.
Wasn't this... (Score:3)
Wasn't this already known? I believe the idea was that we tend to find partners that resemble our parents somewhat, which would obviously explain similarity in faces. Cannot seem find the source of that, though...
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(Also note that we don't see your own faces a lot and if we do, it's somewhat distorted (very close, flipped horizontally) compared to what our face would look like. So our idea of what we look like isn't that good. Selecting a partner based on what we look like ourselves therefore seems a bit unlikely.)
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My observation is that most women don't like their own looks, or at least are discontented with it. They don't seem likely to select someone who looks like that. (My wife certainly didn't.)
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In my experience what you like and what you fall in love with seem to be two mostly different things :p
Women don't like their looks (Score:2)
But there are many expensive products that they can buy to change their looks...
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Yes. (Score:3)
Both sad and resigned.
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Both sad and resigned.
I was going to go with worn out, but yours was written for a kinder, gentler kind of divorce.
You know, the kind that happens via text message...
No (Score:2)
The great face-scientist Betteridge has told us 'No'.
Alternate theory (Score:3)
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I wonder if instead of couples growing to look alike instead people's perception of them changes. The longer they are together the more they look alike to those that see them because they are use to being seen together. Perhaps you associate them as belonging together, it's familiar to see them together. So we mistake that familiar association with actually looking alike.
If familiarity is a factor, involving strangers in your analysis would validate (or invalidate) that theory rather quickly I would think.
Yes (Score:3)
Bored, with a slight murderous glint in their eyes.
On the extreme side of this... (Score:1)
Oh, definitely. (Score:2)
What? Oh, you're not talking about "long term" relationships. Just ones of less than a century.