Study: Women choose partners like their brothers

Your emotional life may become more or less simple, dependent. The news is that according to a new study published in Evolution and Human Behavior, your ideal lover is probably someone who reminds you of your brother. This evolutionary theory suggests much. According to this research on optimal mating, there is a fine line between avoiding incest and at the same time avoiding people who are completely different from you. Marriage is known to be a problem, but scientists say that overbreeding also has genetic consequences. So human evolution, from close relationships, says theory.

In an interview with Broadly, Tamsen Saxton, associate professor at Northumbria University who worked with the study, explains that previous research has already shown that people on average tend to choose partners that are similar to their parents.These theories say that parental features are a useful reference point for genetic similarity. "We realized that [this theory] could also apply equally to siblings, so we wanted to test whether we could detect the cognitive similarity between the partner and the sibling."

To do this, researchers asked 32 volunteer women between the ages of 19 and 40 to send pictures of their brothers and their partners. All women in the study were white-skinned to control the perceived cultural similarity. For an additional set of samples, researchers collected 48 photographs of brothers and partners of public figures and celebrities. Then they asked a separate group of volunteers to match the pictures based on who they thought were similar - brother and partner. The group was not aware that the people in the photos had anything to do with each other. The researchers found that less than a third of the reviewers chose a partner for a woman like her brother.

A more complex analysis of data, which included age control and other variables, showed that respondents chose the right pair and brother for each woman, because most of them were similar at 27% of the time, slightly higher than chance. In other words, the study found it more than a coincidence that women chose their partners or husbands who resembled their siblings.

For Saxton, this does not mean you should narrow the search for men to those who look like your brother: "There is an important point that you should not expect to be able to choose a partner that simply depends on the appearance of your brother or sister. Partners like their brothers. " "It is strange to think that our partners may have any resemblance at all with our brothers, and it is logical and logical for us to see no similarity between partner and brother at all," Saxton said. "