Romantic Partners Usually Share Traits

The idea that opposites attract is mostly a myth, according to a 2023 study that found romantic partners generally resembled one another across most measured traits. Researchers combined 480 partner correlations from 199 peer-reviewed studies with an analysis of 133 traits among as many as 79,074 male-female couples in the UK Biobank. Partners showed similarities in politics, religion, education, intelligence, age, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Across both analyses, positive correlations greatly outnumbered negative ones, making similarity the rule rather than the exception.

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