The ideal woman's partner turns out to be someone who looks like her own brother

As well as successfully electrifying the world with their music, the four Beatles in their day also managed to make millions of women around the world fall in love at first sight thanks to their handsome faces and handsome looks. dapper. Just try asking your mother or grandmother, who may have had a crush on one of them. It is different for millennial teenagers today, who might make a member of One Direction or a Kpop boy band as their ideal type of partner.

Unfortunately, the dream of having a husband like Ringo Starr or Harry Styles you may have to bury deeply. Recent research has actually reported that women are more likely to seek out the ideal partner who has similar physical characteristics and traits to their brother or younger brother. Oops! How come?

Human instincts are designed to avoid inbreeding

Humans are social creatures. We yearn for the care and affection of our family members, and to be able to return that love in an equivalent form. On the other hand, the natural instinct to preserve offspring prevents us from feeling sexual or romantic attraction to our own biological family.

There are numerous studies showing that humans are more successful at reproducing and producing offspring if their partners are not like them - for example, parents or siblings. This is what makes humans avoid inbreeding as much as possible to prevent the risk of future offspring inheriting the same damaged genes.

When our partners come from a different family tree from us, the genetic combinations that will be passed on to the next children and grandchildren become more diverse. This instinct is what "kills" sexual or romantic attraction to our own siblings, because genetic diversity is needed to determine human survival and ability to adapt.

However, nurture and compassion for humans will be even higher if both sides of the parents share limited genetic diversity. Past research has shown that we are instinctively friendlier to family members with whom we are closely related, and the closeness between family members is stronger when the parents share fewer genes. This means, to find the ideal partner, humans must look for someone who has a genetic chain that is similar but not the same.

Well, this theory then piqued the curiosity of a group of researchers from Northumbria University in England. They wondered if, in order to fulfill the need for affection from one's own family, it made women more likely to be attracted to men who were similar to their brothers? Even though it sounds strange, and a little off-putting il-feel, their guess turned out to be a little bit true.

What did this study find?

The study, published online in the Evolution and Human Behavior Journal, asked a group of young women to submit two photographs - one of their boyfriend / husband, and one of their brothers. From this collection of photos the researcher then arranged them randomly in a photo album. On the left side of each page they pasted a photo of the brother of one female; On the right side is a photo of the girlfriend of the same woman, surrounded by three randomly selected photos of other female partners.

After that, another group of female volunteers were given the task of researching this photo album and asked to find which of the men on the right side of the page photo (which consists of boyfriend / husband and strangers) is the most similar to the face of the younger sister. on the left side of the album. Volunteers were never told what the purpose of the matching two-face image was; they were unaware of the identities of all the men, and instinctively judged which people were the most similar to each other - as far as they could tell, all these men were randomly selected and unrelated.

In the end, 27 percent of the volunteers chose the woman's romantic partner (either boyfriend or husband) as the man most similar to the sister. This figure is slightly higher than the researchers' initial estimate of around 25 percent. The results show that although women do not always choose the ideal partner who is similar to their brother or younger brother, there is still a common thread between the two. According to the researchers, these findings support the idea that "familiarity is attractive" and that, in fact, two opposing poles are not always as attracted to each other as we have liked to think.

Why are older siblings or younger brothers often the "benchmark" ideal partner for girls?

Dating a guy who is somewhat similar with your own brother or sister in no way means that you really want to date your own sibling. It's more of a deeper sign that you want to date someone who looks most like you, which could indicate narcissistic tendencies in everyone.

We may be attracted to individuals who are similar to ourselves, or siblings, as an affirmation that our personalities and all our actions are normal - but also desirable. In addition, a 2005 study found that two different individuals with similar personality qualities, for example both extroverted or both conscientious and quiet, tended to navigate happier household ark among newlyweds.

For this reason, psychologists recommend that we not only look for ideal partners who are only similar to us physically, but also have the same personality, principles, and vision and mission. Even if you can, you have the same taste in music if you can.