For centuries, people have told stories about how ‘opposites attract’. From literature to modern rom-coms, all have sold this idea of the nerdy-looking boy falling in love with the best-looking girl in the college. But what does science actually say? Research from the University of Missouri suggests these relationships might be best left to the movies. The findings are published in Science Advances.
What science says about attraction
The researchers found that similarly desirable people are more likely to enter into a relationship. They are also more likely to experience success within that relationship.To understand the role of desirability in a relationship, Sean Prall, an assistant professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, traveled to northwest Namibia in southern Africa. There, he studied the behavior of the Himba, a group of semi-nomadic agro-pastoralists. He interviewed people to understand the desirability in the community. With this data, he estimated a “mate value,” which is a measure of how desirable a person is perceived to be as a partner. Their relationship status was also analyzed. The researchers found that people with similar mate values were more likely to enter into a relationship with each other. These couples also had better relationship outcomes. Prall observed that his findings have a stark difference when compared to most research about desirability. “We were interested in this because much of the anthropological work on human mating patterns are based on only people’s preferences. This research focuses on people’s actions. Sure, you might say you’d prefer someone that’s deemed really desirable, but that’s heavily impacted by societal norms. What do you do in that relationship? How does it actually go? That was what we were looking at,” Prall said.
Real beahavior vs stated preferences
Before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, Prall and his fellow researcher, Brooke Scelza, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, spent over a month each summer living with Himba pastoralists to research human behavior.Prall spent five years studying the population. They looked at the data about marriage, parenting decisions, child health, food insecurity and even how choosy people are with their partners. Though much of his previous research is specific to the population, Prall says these findings can be applied to a broader context. “This was a great population to look at these questions because everyone knows each other and most date and marry within the population. You can ask them how much they’d like to be in a relationship with a specific person because they actually know that person. That’s how people have been partnering up for thousands and thousands of years, not online, but with people in your community,” ,” Prall added.
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