Do soulmates look alike? Certainly, many couples may ponder this question before living together! After all, many people find that after marriage, the couple starts to resemble each other more and more, especially happy couples. Even some people may look at a couple and think that they share an uncanny resemblance.
So, does the phenomenon of “couples looking alike” really exist? And do soulmates look alike, at all? Esspecially for a pair of a so-called soul mate and twin flames? What we do know, is that attraction is a strange thing and we do find those with similar looks to us attractive.
In fact, the scientific community has long studied this and there are two hypotheses to answer the question “Do soulmates look alike?” The first is that partners grow to look more alike over time, and the second is that partners initially look alike.
Next, let’s see how scientists discuss whether soulmates look alike. This article only discusses heterosexual situations.
Do partners really grow to look more alike?
In 1987, psychologist Robert Zajonc conducted a study on facial similarity, exploring whether the facial features of long-term cohabiting spouses would converge. The study prepared photos of 12 couples, including their 25-year marriage and their younger photos, which were shuffled. Then volunteers were asked to judge which man and woman were married based on facial similarity.
The results found that for the group married over 25 years, all couples’ photos were successfully matched. Thus, the conclusion was drawn that spouses do indeed become more similar after living together for a long time.And therefore providing an answer to whether soulmates look alike.
However, many people doubt this. On the one hand, because the sample of this experiment is too small, and on the other because the judgment method of volunteers is a visual observation, which is really not very convincing.
Therefore, Tea-makorn and computational psychologist Michal Kosinski redesigned the 1987 experiment.
This time they collected images of 517 married Caucasian couples, both shortly after marrying and between the ages of 20 to 69. Each image was tested in groups with six other opposite-sex images.
Then 153 individuals were invited to visually select the most likely spouse pair.
One of the images of the woman was the wife of that male
At the same time, the experiment also used a facial recognition algorithm called VGGFace2. This has a computing power much stronger than human visual recognition, allowing for proper analysis.
The results show that although these married couples had similar facial features at the time of marriage, the similarity did not increase over time. In fact, it even became slightly less similar. And the conclusions were consistent among participants of different marriage durations.
So the so-called “lookalike couples” is actually because the two individuals were very similar from the start!
They might have some facial similarities, physical similarities, or even similar facial expressions in certain situations.
This conclusion undoubtedly overturns the experiments people did forty or fifty years ago, and it also breaks our cognition from childhood.
This choice is not accidental, because people tend to find a partner who is more similar to themselves. Some theories even suggest that people tend to find those that resemble genetic relatives attractive! This also extends past physical attributes and can morph into personality traits. Ever thought that your partner looks like your parents?
So, it can make you wonder about the notions of opposites attract.
Everyone is quite narcissistic!
In nature, we can see many such phenomena, such as the brightly colored Eastern Bluebird liking to choose equally colorful mates, while darker birds tend to attract each other; Japanese toads also tend to choose mates of a similar size.
This is the instinct of animals. Because the choice of a mate often affects the genetic structure, increasing the chance of passing specific traits to children, this will help different species survive and thrive under the natural law of survival of the fittest.
Humans choose mates in the same way, and a person may prefer a mate with a few genetic similarities, and many similarities too.
A study of 24,000 European couples found that if a person’s genetic shape indicates they are tall, their partner should also be tall. BMI also showed a correlation, although this is not as obvious.
Moreover, our mate choice influences (or influencing factors) are more than animals. In addition to physical traits, we are also influenced by preferences in education, intelligence, personality, and other aspects. The statistically significant factors that have been found include waist-hip ratio, blood pressure, and educational level.
On the other hand, our aesthetics also have an important influence. We tend to like people who bear a striking resemblance to our own appearance, and so we may find them more and more sexually attractive.
“We tend to like and are attracted to, things we are familiar with.”
Justin Lehmiller, social psychologist at Kinsey Institute
In 2013, an experiment confirmed this. The experiment invited 20 young couples who had been dating or together for at least two years. Participants were shown seven different images of their partners, which had various forms of deformation, and then the participants were asked to rank the images based on attractiveness or sexual attractiveness.
It was found that both the participating men and women felt attracted to the photos containing their own facial features were the most attractive.
You see, everyone is quite narcissistic!
Faced with people who look like us, we find them sexually attractive. While this might not be on a conscious level, it’s a fact. If you don’t believe me, go and look at the celebrities you like, aren’t there always some features that are similar? And you and they also seem to have some commonalities.
Although the faces of the couple do not grow more alike, partners really do become alike in some ways…
The two people do become more and more alike in behavior, demeanor, and facial expressions.
This comes from gradually influencing each other and “learning” from each other after living together for a long time. Because we always unconsciously imitate the people around us, just like seeing someone yawn, we can’t help but do the same.
Emotions are also contagious, when we see someone smiling, we unconsciously raise the corners of our mouths. This process is called empathetic mimicry in psychology, which is when we see a partner express a certain emotion, we subconsciously mimic the partner’s facial expression and transfer that emotion to ourselves.
So, cohabiting partners who are in tune with each other, often have shared emotions, and their expressions will become more and more similar, even if the two people originally had different facial features, we will feel that they look very similar after some time. This is also why many couples who’ve been together for a long time often finish each other’s sentences.
Ah, a friendly reminder, long-term cohabiting partners, in addition to emotional/life habits imitation, are also likely to spread some “couple diseases“.
Then the more “couple look alike,” the better the relationship between the two people?
Are people who share similar features meant to be together? Are they twin flames, soul mates, or even a life partner?
The answer is uncertain.
There are studies both domestically and internationally on whether “couples look alike” is related to the level of marital satisfaction, but the conclusions are completely opposite. So there is currently no conclusive evidence that the more similar the look, the better the relationship.
“Couples look alike” is not the cause of the stability of the relationship between two people. And not everyone may subconsciously choose a partner who shares similarities.
So do soulmates look alike?
Although this is an era that values appearance, we have a good impression of people who look like us and can even develop feelings for them. But focusing on later life, appearance is not the key to maintaining emotions with a partner, the key should be whether the most important parts in each person’s heart match, such as similar personalities, character, values, lifestyle, future planning, etc. Other my even find that best friends make better partners, and something as small as eye color can make or break sexual attraction.
If only “couples look alike” is used to judge the degree of relationship between two people, then… it would be too impolite for those couples who don’t look alike.So in answering the “Do soulmates look alike?” question, it’s yes and now. Not all long-term couples look alike.
In short, probability helps us understand some rules, but it cannot interpret the essence of love. Using probability to define, find, and judge one’s love is a bit too simplistic.
