There is a popular belief that the longer couples stay in marriage, the more they look alike. NNAEMEKA MERIBE reviews some studies into this belief.
If you do a little thinking, you'll probably remember some older couples you know who look very much alike. You probably have also been wondering whether the resemblance was there before they got married or whether it was many years of marriage that caused their features to look alike, as in aging in similar way.
Well, it€˜s a common belief not just in Nigeria but also in other climes that married couples grow to look alike.
Though some people may contend that what makes such spouses tend to resemble each other is that seeing them together overtime may make people€˜s minds to begin to €˜see' similarities in their facial features.
But, science has lent support to the old belief. Psychologists in the University of Michigan, US, studied this phenomenon many years ago and found that shared emotions could gradually sculpture the faces of a couple to become more similar. Moreover, they found that the more marital happiness a couple reported, the greater their increase in facial resemblance...
Dr. Robert Zajonc, who led the study, wanted to see if people could identify married couples solely from photographs of faces.
Participants viewed two sets of photographs: pictures of males and females at the beginning of their relationships and a set after the individuals (who were between the ages of 50 and 60 years old) had been married for at least 25 years.
The participants were asked to match the men to the women who looked most like them. They matched older couples together more often than younger couples..
Zajonc suggested that empathy was the most likely factor leading couples to look more alike the longer they are together. He said that shared facial expressions bring on identical emotions because facial muscles play a role in regulating blood flow to the brain. €˜€˜You both smile because you feel good and feel good because you smile,€˜€˜ he said.
According to Zajonc, one sign that such empathy has been going on is that people€˜s fixed facial features begin to resemble those of their spouses as a result of sharing the same expressions often. In support, he points to the finding in his study that those couples who were found to resemble each other most greatly after 25 years were also those who reported the happiest marriages.
In any case, the article, Long-married couples do Look Alike, study finds, published in the New York Times of August 11, 1987, noted that a research by Olaf Dimberg, a psychologist in Sweden, lends support for mimicry of expressions
Dimberg measured the tension levels in the facial muscles of volunteers while they were shown photographs of various facial expressions. When the volunteers saw an angry face, for instance, their facial muscles mimicked the anger, often to a degree that was invisible but was measurable by electronic devices.
The study further suggested that diet might also be another factor contributing to facial similarities €“ although Zajonc gave this theory less credence. The longer a couple is together, the more likely they are to have the same foods in their diet, thus receiving the same vitamins and minerals. Likewise, older couples might also avoid the same foods and certain nutrients might be absent from both spouses€˜ diets. When the older couples€˜ photographs were evaluated for facial fat, a correlation was not found.
But a new study by psychologists at Michigan State University, US, contends that marriage does not in any way make couples to look alike. The research by psychologists at Michigan State University and the University of Minnesota was based on a relatively huge data base of 1,296 couples who have been married for an average of 19 years. It was published in the current issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
According to ABC News, what the researchers found was that couples who had been married for a long time €“ up to 39 years €“ were no more alike in fundamental personality traits than newlyweds, leading the researchers to conclude that personalities do not grow more similar as the years pass. More likely, the couples were looking for specific traits during the courtship and they ended up with someone who was very much like themselves.
"They may not have been conscious of that at the time," Mikhila Humbad, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Michigan State University, and lead author of the study, told ABC News.
When Humbad and her colleagues began studying the large data base collected by the Minnesota Centre for Twin and Family Research, ABC News noted, they were struck by the fact that married couples seemed very similar to each other, at least in terms of definitive personality traits.
"We wondered why that similarity was there," she was quoted as saying.
Research by others has led to debate among psychologists over whether similarities are a product of convergence (spouses grow more similar over time) or selection (similarity is what the spouses were looking for in the beginning.)
"That could be what attracted them to each other in the first place," Humbad noted.
The reserchers found that nearly all the spouses had many personality traits that they shared with their mates, regardless of how long they had been together. And the similarities did not grow or diminish when the older marriages were compared to the newlyweds €“ with one notable exception which is aggression.
The data shows that if one spouse is physically aggressive, the other is likely to react in a similar manner.
"It is possible that individuals might reinforce each other€˜s aggressive tendencies due to hostile interpersonal exchanges, thereby promoting greater convergence over time," the study concludes.
"It makes sense if you think about it," Humbad added. "If one person is violent, the other person may respond in a similar fashion and thus become more aggressive over time."
A similar study published in the March, 2006 issue of the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, however, argued that marriage does not necessarily make couples to look alike but rather, the similarities in appearance in couples grow with marriage.
According to the study, human beings like people who look like us, because they tend to have personalities similar to one another. In other words, one will likely marry someone who looks like one.
The researchers investigated why couples often tend to resemble one another. They asked 11 male and 11 female participants to judge the age, attractiveness and personality traits of 160 real-life married couples. Photographs of husbands and wives were viewed separately, so the participants didn€˜t know who was married to whom.
According to the online science news portal, LiveScience, the test participants rated men and woman who were actual couples as looking alike and having similar personalities. Also, the longer the couples had been together, the greater the perceived similarities.
In his view, however, a psychiatrist, Dr. Adeoye Oyewole, said couples did not actually look alike physically but, perhaps, psychologically.
"In my view, this is just a perception. And what people perceive are not the physical attributes of the couples but the psychological attributes - that is, synergy," said Oyewole, who is the Head, Psychiatry, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Osogbo Campus. "When people marry, they begin to accommodate each other in different ways and, over time, they will even believe that they are alike in a lot of ways. And people see them together continuously, they will see the synergy and not necessarily any physical change."
Oyewole argued that people at times believed that members of religious sects looked alike without necessarily examining the physical attributes.
He said, "Because they have seen the members of the sect overtime wearing the same clothes and shaving their hairs and beards the same style, they will think that they (sect members) look alike without paying close attention to their facial features."
