Opposites Don ’ t Attract: Why You and Your Spouse Are So Much Alike

We all know couples who, on the surface at least, seem incompatible. One person is an introvert, the other an extravert; one likes fine wine, the other never drinks; one is deeply religious, the other doesn’t believe. It’s those pairs who give rise to the idea that opposites attract. But that notion appears to be mistaken. According to a new study in the journal Nature Human Behavior, most partners tend to be profoundly similar—sharing up to 89% of the traits the researchers analyzed, including not just religiosity, alcohol consumption and introversion or extraversion, but also political values, IQ, level of education, openness to new experiences, susceptibility to depression, age at which each partner became sexually active, and more. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] [video id=J0jVpjnF autostart="viewable"] “Positive correlations between both members of a couple are the rule, not the exception,” says Matthew Keller, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and one of the paper’s authors. “The degree of spousal similarity can be really high.” The sample group the researchers surveyed was both wide and deep. First, they conducted a meta-analysis of 22 traits couples may or may not share which were studied in 199 published papers going back as far as 1903. Collectively, those papers contained information on 8.5 million people. Next, they turned to the UK Biobank, a Brit...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Psychology Source Type: news