Written by Abha
How many times have you seen two people interact like oil and water, only to realize they are fated to be with each other?
We’ve heard tales of princesses falling for stable boys and theoretical physicists getting bewitched by your local waitress. It makes us think: do opposites really attract? That’s what romantic comedies would have you believe.
While opposites make for great sexual tension, they mostly don’t attract. If you hate someone right now, chances are you will keep hating them. : )
Novels and movies have romanticized the idea of opposites to such an extent that it’s easy to see how society views it as something ideal. One partner’s strengths are balanced out by the other partner’s weaknesses, what’s wrong with that? In fact, one could imagine the friends of a shy person trying to set them up with an outgoing person to draw the shy one out, or goody-two-shoes prefects seeking out bad boys only to be overwhelmed.
The question is, whether people actually seek out complementary partners or if it’s just in media.
As it turns out, it’s pure fiction. There is virtually no research evidence that differences in personality, interests, education, politics, upbringing, religion or other traits lead to more significant attraction.
In fact, in one study, researchers found that college students preferred descriptions of people similar to themselves or their ideal self over those described as differing from them. Other studies have supported this finding. It has even been found that introverts are no more attracted to extroverts than they are to anyone else.
Now when it comes to platonic love and friendship, it takes a certain amount of effort to maintain these relationships. It could involve comforting a friend after a breakup. If you’re a chimp, it would mean, picking bugs out of your pal’s hair.
But, human or chimp, how does one decide who to become friends with? A recent study looking at what factors predicted friendships between pairs of chimpanzees revealed that individuals with similar personalities were more likely to be friends. Outgoing chimpanzees were buddies with each other, while shyer types also stuck together. For chacma baboons, touchy-feely types tended to pair up while the more reserved became friends — without all the touching and feeling, of course.
Similarly, researchers find that we as humans, tend to seek out people with personality traits similar to ours, who think and act like us.
Inevitably, then when it comes to romantic love, opposites attract. Right?
WRONG!
Study suggests when it comes to matters of the heart, well.. it’s complicated.
Researcher Kelsey Edelmann said: ‘Friendships can work with a certain amount of opposite attraction. This makes it different from a romantic relationship, where it helps if you are largely similar.’
In a 2003 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, respondents ranked how critical certain traits were in a romantic partner. Then they rated the extent to which they exhibited that trait themselves. If people thought they were attractive, they wanted a similarly attractive partner. If people thought they were wealthy, they wanted a partner of equivalent status.
Generally speaking, it appears, birds of a feather romantically flock together. But are they happier in their relationships? It is a curious question — and one that was investigated in a new study conducted by researchers Nathan Hudson and Chris Fraley. Specifically, they wanted to examine whether couples that are more similar in terms of personality are more satisfied than those who are more dissimilar.
To assess similarity, Hudson and Fraley referred to the Big Five Personality traits. Participants rated themselves and their partners for multiple characteristics, and also completed a measure of relationship satisfaction. These characteristics included extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience.
The scientists crunched the numbers and got fascinating results. People with similar traits of agreeableness and moderately identical in terms of emotional stability experienced high levels of satisfaction. By contrast, sharing traits of extraversion, openness, conscientiousness didn’t affect relationship satisfaction. The tricky thing about this finding, though, is the researchers claim that these personality traits take much longer to reveal themselves than attitude similarities do. That means that it may be possible for a heavily tattooed man to find love with a never-been-inked gal — if they’re both the same level of neurotic.
Thus, sharing similar personality traits doesn’t necessarily mean a relationship will be more satisfying — unless you perceive that you are similar. Hudson and Fraley found that partners who see themselves as similar have more satisfying relationships, regardless of whether or not they actually are very similar.
This attachment is defined early on. Attachment develops from the relationship between infants and their caregiver, with particular respect to responsiveness and availability. The effects of early attachment are far-reaching, establishing how we perceive ourselves and others as we grow into adults. In broad terms, individuals who experience loving and consistent early care giving develop a secure attachment. In contrast, those who receive harsh and/or inconsistent treatment from their early caregivers develop insecure attachment.
Insecure attachment breaks down into two types:
- Those who are high on attachment avoidance believe that others will not respond to their needs, and correspondingly have a negative view of others. They tend to avoid intimacy and are ill at ease when they feel their partner is too close.
- Those who are high on attachment anxiety are preoccupied with how available others are, and have a negative view of themselves. They seek out intimacy and contact with others, and can often be cloying or “needy” in their relationships.
Highly avoidant people seemed to be most satisfied with their relationships when the personalities of the partners were moderately similar. The researchers interpret this finding as possibly reflecting a level of “counter-dependence” with which avoidant people are comfortable. An optimal balance of similarities and differences may help avoidant people keep intimacy at bay.
But for highly anxious people it was a different story. They experience higher levels of relationship satisfaction with partners who are either highly similar or dissimilar to them.
Hudson and Fraley speculate that similarity offers anxious people the feeling of “oneness” that they crave with their significant others. At the same time, dissimilarity may encourage “reliant dependence” on their partners. For the anxiously attached, having a dissimilar partner may be a way to compensate for one’s own shortcoming, say the researchers.
So, do opposites attract?
Again, it’s complicated. But here’s a thought: It has been said that the happiest couples never have the same set of characteristics — they have the best understanding of their differences. Perhaps that explains why friendship often is the best place to start when looking for a romantic partner, and to a fulfilling life.
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