More on Attraction

In the comments of my last post, blogger Anakin, of Biblical Manhood, posed the following:

I wonder how much family of origin might play in who we are physically attracted to? Do we tend to be attracted to those that remind us of our relatives of the opposite sex?

I thought this question was interesting so I decided to see if I could find any research about it. In my somewhat superficial search I didn’t find much and what I did find was a little contradictory. Also, the two articles I found were not the original research articles, but rather commentary on the research, so I can’t be sure the person writing the commentary accurately reflected the findings.

Sanjay Gupta of Time Magazine commented on a study by McClintock et al., (2002) where they took t-shirts worn by men for 2 days and placed them in a box. They asked single women to smell them and indicate which one they preferred if they had to smell it all the time. They ended up preferring the smell of men who were similar (genetically speaking) to their fathers (so presumably having genetic similarities to themselves), but not too similar.

Staff writers at New Scientist commented on a study by Garver-Apgar et al. (2007) that indicated that genetic differences may be what promotes attraction, at least for women. The researchers analyzed the genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of 48 couples who had been together 2 or more years. The MHC manages how your immune system senses an invader. The researchers asked the couples how responsive and faithful they were toward their partner. The women who had MHCs similar to their partners were more likely to be less sexually responsive to their partners and more attracted to other men. There was no significant relationship between MHC similarity and faithfulness or responsiveness of the men. It was suggested this finding could lead to a genetic test that determines how likely it is that a woman will be faithful to a man.

Anecdotally I have heard people mention this as well. One of my best friends says that she is attracted to taller, burlier men because they remind her of her dad. She theorizes that your dad is your first image of masculinity, so it makes sense that men you are attracted to may share characteristics with him. I know another woman who has a fuller, larger figure who told me that when she and her husband were dating he told her both that he thought she was beautiful and that she reminded him of his mom.

On a side note, I also learned some interesting things about studies of sexual attraction. Psychologists who study attraction distinguish between short-term mating strategies and long-term mating strategies and the studies we commonly hear about (symmetry, waist/hip ratio, etc.) are studies of short-term mating strategies. There is very little research that has been done on long-term mating strategies (DeLamater & Hyde, 2001). One study that examined mate preferences including those related to relationship survival and satisfaction (ie; long-term strategies) among more than 6000 couples (of who 4313 were heterosexual) revealed that most of the participants had strong preferences for partners who are affectionate and compassionate (Howard, Blumenstein, & Schwartz, 1987).