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Long Married Couples Look Somewhat Alike ?

Discussion in 'Married Life' started by Hopikrishnan, Dec 10, 2020.

  1. Hopikrishnan

    Hopikrishnan Platinum IL'ite

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    In old family photos, the children look like one or the other of the couples. And then the children start to look like both of their parents. And then the parents start to look like one another.
    <source>
    A decades-old question of whether couples in long-term marriage/relationships begin to look alike over time has been answered by researchers.
    In 1987, researchers suggested that spouses’ faces were not similar at the outset of marriage but became more similar, with the “degree of convergence positively correlated with couples’ ratings of marriage quality”.
    According to the researchers’ hypothesis, couples tend to begin looking alike because they typically “occupy the same environments, engage in the same activities, eat the same food, and mimic each other’s emotional expressions,” all of which can influence facial features.​

    However in a recent study <source> from Stanford, there was this:
    The widely disseminated convergence in physical appearance hypothesis posits that long-term partners’ facial appearance converges with time due to their shared environment, emotional mimicry, and synchronized activities. Although plausible, this hypothesis is incompatible with empirical findings pertaining to a wide range of other traits—such as personality, intelligence, attitudes, values, and well-being—in which partners show initial similarity but do not converge over time. We solve this conundrum by reexamining this hypothesis using the facial images of 517 couples taken at the beginning of their marriages and 20 to 69 years later. Using two independent methods of estimating their facial similarity (human judgment and a facial recognition algorithm), we show that while spouses’ faces tend to be similar at the beginning of marriage, they do not converge over time, bringing facial appearance in line with other personal characteristics.

    I had known the 1987 hypothesis, old-wives' tales from before that, and in our own photos, there was indeed a convergence of appearance over the years.

    How about you ?
     
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  2. ashima10

    ashima10 Platinum IL'ite

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    Its true. Many people tell me me and my husband looks like siblings. I assume its because of looks because
    1. he is conventionally good looking
    2. we do fight a lot, so dont want to think that we fight like sibling.

    Ashima.
     
  3. anika987

    anika987 IL Hall of Fame

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    Totally agree!

    On a lighter note, couple of examples..

    Shahrukh - gauri

    saif - kareena
     
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  4. MalStrom

    MalStrom IL Hall of Fame

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    They probably go to the same plastic surgeons. :tongueclosed:
     
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  5. shravs3

    shravs3 IL Hall of Fame

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    Although I’m not sure if it’s only applicable to long married couples.But I have seen many young couples who look alike.
    Ex. Jay Shetty & Radhi Devlukia - Their eyes are so similar
     
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  6. Hopikrishnan

    Hopikrishnan Platinum IL'ite

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    You would surely have a good point there. When people find their mates (whether arranged or in other ways) each wants to find someone who is a "match" in looks, in status, and in every other way. Quite often people who like themselves want an opposite gender version of their own selves for a match. And some people succeed in finding that match.
     
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  7. DavenaRosalie

    DavenaRosalie Silver IL'ite

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    I guess it's true, a lot of people tells me that my husband and I look alike now
     
  8. Rihana

    Rihana Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Good Lord! A quick mental scan of the family photos and the comments that people have made after seeing them indicates that this is eerily accurate and would make one wonder. When the kids were small, friends easily said favors this parent more than the other. Now when I share recent photos with friends who didn't see the kids as little ones, they say your kids look a little like each parent.


    Good to read about the possible theories in layman's terms. Interesting.

    Hmm... I actually don't like to look at myself in the mirror on in photos : ) but I think rather than convergence there was similarity to start with. In particular, one grandparent on my side is very similar in the face's appearance to one in his side.
     
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  9. Rihana

    Rihana Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    So true! I am shocked that I didn't realize it when it is so obvious. Wonder what if Saif and Amrita Singh had stayed together. : )

    Now I find myself checking this out in celebrity couples pictures. : )
    va.jpg
    Source
     
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  10. Hopikrishnan

    Hopikrishnan Platinum IL'ite

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    People who have been married long, as well as happy*, may have acquired the styles of the other spouse as well. The questions like "what s/he would do/say" may run like subliminal algorithms in decisions for what we do and say. Notions of "standing together" ( against the collective extended family, against the "world", against rebelling teen children etc. etc..) as a couple becomes natural when that subliminal algorithm gets perfected over time.

    This sort of style-acquisition can also be aspirational in the dreamy-young things capable of developing algorithms from hypothetical ideal spouses. LINK by @Novalis.

    *happy is very critical for convergence. Contentious lives, such as "waiting for kids to be 18, so as to split", will not help at all.
     

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