Scientists have debunked the ‘opposites attract’ myth in couples

It’s something couples and people in the dating game have been told for years, but do opposites actually attract?

Well, as it turns out, scientists have proven that it’s a load of rubbish.

A new study has found that the old adage is not true, and in the vast majority of cases, couples are far more likely to share very similar characteristics than vastly different ones.

Research into romantic relationships discovered that more than 80 per cent of traits, which included everything from smoker status to drinking habits and the age people first had sex, were shared in couples.

In fact, the researchers even went as far as saying that “opposites attract” couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Birds of a feather are indeed more likely to flock together,” said Tanya Horwitz, who is a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder and the first author of the study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

iStock

“Even in situations where we feel like we have a choice about our relationships, there may be mechanisms happening behind the scenes of which we aren’t fully aware,” Horwitz said.

The data was pretty clear, showing that between 82 per cent and 89 per cent of traits were similar among partners. Some things didn’t match the correlation – for one, extroverts were just as likely to match up with extroverts as introverts.

The study looked into 133 traits in nearly 80,000 opposite-sex couples enrolled in the UK Biobank project. The researchers are looking into same-sex couples as behaviour may differ.

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings