David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Love at First Sight
By Stephen Bertman, Ph.D.
30-04-2008
The song Some Enchanted Evening from Rodgers and Hammerstein?s South Pacific warns us that, when it comes to explaining love at first sight, "Fools give you reasons. Wise men never try." Notwithstanding this lyrical warning, more and more psychologists are trying to solve this age-old mystery.
According to a recent survey, almost two out of three Americans believe in love at first sight (Naumann, 2001). The survey reported that over half of them have actually experienced it, and over half of those went on to marry the person they had instantly fallen in love with.
The concept of love at first sight goes all the way back to the days of the ancient Greeks, who worshiped a goddess they called Aphrodite. (The Romans would later call her Venus.) Aphrodite could overwhelm mere mortals with her immense power and take control of their lives by overriding both common sense and conscience. In one legendary case, a handsome Trojan prince named Paris fell in love with a beautiful Spartan queen named Helen, and she with him, the very first time they saw each other. The only problem was that Helen was already married. When the two lovers sailed away together to Troy, Helen?s husband assembled an armada to bring his wife back home ? leading the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe (1604) later to remark that Helen?s was "the face that launch?d a thousand ships." A war ensued that lasted ten years, and the epic poems that war inspired ? Homer?s Iliad and Odyssey ? would endure forever. As Naumann?s (2001) survey reveals, Aphrodite is alive and well today, still wielding her power over our lives.
Greek religion aside, how can we explain Helen and Paris? attraction for each other? According to legend, Paris was a divinely handsome hero, and Helen the most beautiful woman in all the world, so perhaps it was their extraordinary looks that drew them together. But in saying that, we?d have to admit simultaneously that not every Dick or Jack is as dashing as Paris, nor every Jane or Jill as stunning as Helen. Though beauty may well be in the eye of the beholder, the fact that ordinary Dicks and Janes, or Jacks and Jills, fall hopelessly in love the moment they see each other suggests that something other than simple aesthetics is at work. If so, what could that mysterious "something" be?
That Fabulous Face
If Helen had "the face that launch?d a thousand ships," maybe we should start with the human face in our quest for an answer. After all, when people meet, their faces are what they see first. Because of the multiple components that make up the human face and together give it its distinctiveness, our face is the one part of our body that, more than any other, expresses our personal identity. For that reason, the face is the image pressed with affection into so many leather wallets and echoed with passion in the lyrics of so many love songs.
But what is there about a face that could make it so hypnotically appealing? One nose, two lips, two eyes ? are such physical features sufficient in and of themselves to induce us to surrender our will and cosmically link our life with that of another human being? The answer seems to be yes, according to the findings of investigators.
The first striking phenomenon about faces and love is that so many people who are in love look alike, more so than chance would allow, and this has been documented empirically (Chambers, Christiansen, & Kunz, 1983; Griffiths & Kunz, 1973; Hinsz, 1989). Recently, Alvarez and Jaffe (2004) photographed 36 randomly selected couples and divided the photographs into six groups. Then, after cutting the pictures from each group in two, shuffling them, and placing them on a table, they invited a panel of neutral judges to match up the correct sexual partners in each group. The experiment was conducted as a double-blind test with neither the judges nor their supervisors knowing the right answers in advance.
According to chance, the judges should have averaged one correct match for every set of six pictures, about the same as guessing what double number would come up when a pair of dice is rolled. But instead of averaging one right match out of six, the judges got almost two out of six right each time. The close resemblances between sexual partners applied equally to those who were good-looking and to those who were not. In fact, the judges did well even when they were shown only the noses, eyes, or mouths of the test subjects. In short, the study seems to demonstrate that facial resemblances between romantic partners are significantly higher than mere chance would suggest.
In a separate study by psychologist Lisa M. DeBruine, people trusted strangers more when photographs of the strangers? faces were digitally altered by image manipulation software to more closely resemble their own (DeBruine, 2002, 2005). These results supported the findings of a comparable computer-graphics study in which individual subjects had preferred members of the opposite sex with face-shapes similar to their own (Penton-Voak, Perrett, & Pierce, 1999).
Though research has suggested the faces of older couples grow to look alike because they tend to mimic each other?s expressions (Zajonc, Adelmann, Murphy, & Niedenthal, 1987), other research has shown that striking facial resemblances are evident among couples who are young as well as old, including those who are engaged and haven?t yet married (Hinsz, 1989).
Additional support, albeit unscientific, for "like attracts like" was provided by British portrait painter Suzi Malin in her popular book, Love at First Sight. Intrigued by the facial likenesses between certain celebrity couples (between, for example, Elvis and Priscilla Presley, or Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston), Malin created a series of "split-screen" portraits by photographically pairing the right half of one lover?s face with the left half of the other?s. Malin?s erotic Rorschach blots dramatically convey the astonishing visual correspondences between famous lovers based on the notable similarities between their facial proportions and/or features. However, as the lives of such celebrity couples sadly demonstrate, facial resemblances may be responsible for mutual attraction in the beginning (through a process unromantically called physiognomic homogamy), but in the long run they may not be sufficiently strong to hold a relationship together.
Why Fido Looks Like Fred
Next door to Malin?s portrait gallery hangs a very different set of photographs collected by California-based sociologist Gini Graham Scott: over fifty photos, not of look-alike celebrity couples but of look-alike dogs and their owners. Scott?s pictures appear in her book, Do You Look Like Your Dog?, and can be seen on her amusing website Do You Look Like Your Dog?.
Of course, one swallow (or, in this case, one St. Bernard) does not a summer make. The impressive similarities we see in such pictures, far from being persuasive evidence that people regularly buy pets that resemble them, may simply be anomalies that, in and of themselves, don?t prove a thing, however funny or fascinating the correlations might appear.
However, empirical studies have corroborated Scott?s observations of pet and pet-owner similarity (Coren, 1999; Roy & Christenfeld, 2004, 2005). Their findings were further confirmed by a similar research project conducted by Payne and Jaffe (2005). While attending the National Canine Exposition in Caracas, Venezuela, they took pictures of purebred dogs and their owners. To eliminate any potential clues as to what dogs went with what owners, Payne and Jaffe (2005) used a special photographic process that retained each face but eliminated any tell-tale background.
Additionally, the researchers adjusted the images of pets and owners so all faces would be comparably sized. Having done that, they then picked 36 canine faces and 36 human faces and arranged the photos into six groups, each group containing six dogs and six owners. Finally, judges were asked to pair up the right dogs with the right owners in each set. As in the other studies, the judges paired up owners and dogs more successfully than mere chance would allow (Payne & Jaffe, 2005; Roy & Christenfeld, 2004). While mere chance would have resulted in about one right pick out of six, the judges averaged two, three, or even four correct picks out of six each time.
Thanks to these careful experiments with pets we now know that Scott?s perception that dogs and owners tend to look alike is supported by rigorous scientific research. But why do people buy dogs that resemble them? And why do human couples tend to resemble each other as well?
In Plato?s Symposium, the Greek playwright Aristophanes recounted a fascinating legend. According to the tale, when human beings were first created, they were comical roly-poly creatures with two faces, four arms, and four legs. The gods then split them in two. Therefore, claimed the playwright, we spend our lives desperately searching for the matching half that we need to complete us.
Are we then somehow cosmically programmed to seek our "other half", a half that is our mirror image? Are we somehow, despite the dictum that "opposites attract", subconsciously drawn to people who resemble us?
The Face in the Water
The ancient Greeks provided an answer of sorts in the myth of Narcissus. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Narcissus was an extraordinarily handsome but self-centered young man who spurned all his lovers. Finally, one of them cursed him by praying that someday Narcissus should himself feel the pain of unrequited love. One day while walking through the woods, Narcissus came upon a pond and gazed into its waters. As he did so, he saw the face of a handsome young man looking up at him. Desiring to embrace the beautiful youth, Narcissus dipped his hands into the water but, as he did, the image broke up. Each time he drew closer to the surface of the water, the object of his love seemed to draw closer to him but, each time he reached into its waters, the image again disappeared. Frustrated in his self-love, a despondent Narcissus continued to sit by the edge of the pond until he finally withered away and died. Even in death, Ovid tells us, Narcissus continued to gaze at his own image in the waters of the river Styx.
The myth of Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, and teaches us the mesmerizing power of self-love, a power that can ? if we are not vigilant ? consume and destroy us. To be mindlessly attracted to a replica of the familiar face in our mirror may, in fact, be a prescription for a broken heart.
The Birds and the Bees
In fact, it may not be the face we see in our mirror, our own face, that guides us in the choice of a mate. The face that functions as our erotic template may in fact be one we saw long before we ever knew what a mirror was.
The observations of British naturalist Spalding (1873) and German zoologist Heinroth (1910) paved the way for research on imprinting in chicks and goslings. When goslings were hatched in an incubator (and were thereby prevented from seeing their actual mothers), they instead became attached to the first human beings they saw, and responded to them as though the people were their parents. Heinroth concluded that the first image the goslings saw somehow became stamped or "imprinted" on their impressionable young brains.
This theory of imprinting was later elaborated by the Austrian zoologist Lorenz (1937) and in decades of subsequent research (Lorenz, 1937, (1988; (Todd & Miller, 1993). As a result of his close observation of ground-nesting birds like ducks and greylag geese, Lorenz concluded that imprinting occurs quickly, takes place only during a critically brief period of time (usually by the first morning after hatching), and is irreversible. Deprived of the sight or sound of its mother, a little duckling or gosling will "adopt" as its parent the first thing it sees and/or hears: a human being (especially if he or she quacks in response to a hatchling?s plaintive peep), or, strangely in the absence of a voice, even a silent inanimate object like a cardboard box, a red balloon, or a white ball. If young ducks or geese imprint on a human, they will affectionately follow in a gaggle wherever their "parent" leads, a phenomenon that was strikingly illustrated in 1993 when Canadian artist and inventor Bill Lishman helped forgetful geese migrate 400 miles from Ontario to Virginia by training them to follow his ultralight airplane, and again the next year when he led another flock of avian amnesiacs by air all the way to South Carolina. By using imprinting to induce the geese to follow his airplane, Lishman became "Father Goose". His aerial exploits are described in his autobiography and were imaginatively and poignantly reenacted in the 1996 family film Fly Away Home, starring Jeff Daniels. Lorenz? basic theory of filial imprinting is now well documented and accepted by the scientific community. Investigators have even identified the part of a bird?s brain that enables a chick to imprint (Horn, 1998; McCabe & Nicol, 1999).
In addition to advancing the theory of filial imprinting, Lorenz also proposed a theory of sexual imprinting. According to this theory, the image imprinted on the brain of the young animal (originally designed by nature to make it easier for an offspring to identify and find its nurturing parent) also has the effect of defining and determining its mating preferences in the future. Thus, upon becoming sexually mature, the young animal seeks out a mate that closely resembles the parental imprint implanted in its brain.
A Lasting Impression
What, you may justifiably ask, does all this have to do with my love-life? If I fall in love at first sight, will I be acting like a "bird-brain"?? Well, perhaps. Birds and human beings are, after all, both links in evolution?s chain, though there is a huge biological gap between them.
Recent research, however, suggests that imprinting does indeed influence our choice of mates. People?s faces have been shown to resemble not only their sexual partners? faces but also the faces of their own parents of the opposite sex, especially when it comes to hair color and eye color (Bereczkei, Gyuris, Koves, & Bernath, 2002; Little, Penton-Voak, Burt, & Perrett, 2003). The age of our parents also seems to influence our choice of mate, with females born to older parents being attracted to the faces of older men, and males born to older parents being drawn to the faces of older women (Perrett, Penton-Voak, Little, Tiddeman, Burt, Schmidt et al., 2002). Furthermore, daughters who were adopted between two and eight years old, or who rated their childhood relationships with their fathers highly, chose husbands whose faces looked like those of the fathers who raised them (Bereczkei, Gyuris, & Weisfeld, 2004; Wiszewska, Pawlowski, & Boothroyd, 2007).
Thus, it?s entirely possible that the person who made the most lasting visual impression on you when you were a young child or infant ? a parent, a sibling, or even a nanny ? unknowingly drew the mental roadmap to your romantic future. Your search for Mr. or Ms. Right might simply be an exercise, albeit a risky one, in post-hypnotic suggestion.
References
Alvarez, L., & Jaffe, K. (2004). Narcissism Guides Mate Selection: Humans Mate Assortatively, as Revealed by Facial Resemblance, Following an Algorithm of ?Self Seeking Like.? Evolutionary Psychology, 2, 177-194.
Bereczkei, T, Gyuris, P., Koves, P. & Bernath, L. (2002). Homogamy, Genetic Similarity, and Imprinting: Parental Influence on Mate Choice Preferences. Personality and Individual Differences, 33, 677-690.
Bereczkei, T., Gyuris, P. & Weisfeld, G.E. (2004). Sexual Imprinting in Human Mate Choice. Proceedings of the Royal British Society of London, Biology, 271, 1129-1134.
Chambers, V.J., Christiansen, J.R. & Kunz, P.R. (1983). Physiognomic Homogamy: A Test of Physical Similarity as a Factor in the Mate Selection Process. Social Biology, 30, 151-157.
Coren, S. (1999). Do People Look Like Their Dogs? Anthrozoos, 12, 111-114.
Debruine, L.M. (2002). Facial Resemblance Enhances Trust. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biology, 269, 1307-1312.
Debruine, L. M. (2005). Trustworthy but not Lust-worthy: Context-specific Effects of Facial Resemblance. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biology, 272, 919-922.
Griffiths, R.W. & Kunz, P.R. (1973). Assortative Mating: A Study of Physiognomic Homogamy. Social Biology, 20, 448-453.
Heinroth, O. (1910). Beitr?ge zur Biologie, namentlich Ethologie und Psychologie der Anatiden. Verhandlungen der 5 International Ornithologisch Kongress, Berlin, 589-702.
Hinsz, V.B. (1989). Facial Resemblance in Engaged and Married Couples. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 6, 223-229.
Horn, G. (1998). Visual Imprinting and the Neural Mechanisms of Recognition Memory. Trends in Neuroscience, 21, 300-305.
Lishman, W. (1996). Father Goose. New York: Crown.
Little, A. C., Penton-Voak, I. S., Burt, D. M. & Perrett, D. I. (2003). Investigating an Imprinting-Like Phenomenon in Humans: Partners and Opposite-Sex Parents Have Similar Hair and Eye Colour. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 43-51.
Lorenz, K. (1937). The Companion in the Bird?s World (in English), Auk, 54, 245-273.
Lorenz, K. (1988). Here I Am ? Where Are You?: The Behavior of the Greylag Goose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Marlowe, C. (1604). The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Act V, Scene i, line 96.
McCabe, B.J., & Nicol, A.U. (1999). The Recognition Memory of Imprinting: Biochemistry and Electrophysiology. Behavioral Brain Research, 98, 253-260.
Naumann, E. (2001). Love at First Sight. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.
Ovid. (1st century B.C.E.). The Metamorphoses, Book III.
Payne, C. & Jaffe, K. (2005). Self Seeks Like: Many Humans Choose Their Dog Pets Filling Rules Used for Assortative Mating. Journal of Ethology, 23, 5-18.
Penton-Voak, I.S., Perrett, D.I. & Pierce, J.W. (1999) Computer Graphic Studies of the Role of Facial Similarity in Judgements of Attractiveness. Current Psychology: Learning, Personality, Social, 18, 104-117.
Perrett, D.I., Penton-Voak, I.S., Little, A.C., Tiddeman, B.P., Burt, D.M., Schmidt, N., Oxley, R., Kinloch, N. & Barrett, L. (2002). Facial Attractiveness Judgements Reflect Learning of Parental Age Characteristics. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biology, 269, 873-880.
Plato. (4th century B.C.E.). The Symposium, 17-19.
Roy, M.M. & Christenfeld, N.J.S. (2004). Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners? Psychological Science, 15, 361-363.
Roy, M.M. & Christenfeld, N.J.S. (2005). Dogs Still Resemble Their Owners. Psychological Science, 16, 743-744.
Spalding, D.A. (1873). Instinct, with Original Observations on Young Animals. Macmillan?s Magazine, reprinted in Animal Behavior, 2 (1954), 2-11.
Todd, P.M. & Miller, G.F. (1993). Parental Guidance Suggested: How Parental Imprinting Evolves through Sexual Selection as an Adaptive Learning Mechanism. Adaptive Behavior, 2, 5-47.
Wiszewska, A., Pawlowski, B. & Boothroyd, L.G. (2007). Father-Daughter Relationship as a Moderator of Sexual Imprinting: A Facialmetric Study. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 248-252.
Zajonc, R.B., Adelmann, P.K., Murphy, S.T. & Niedenthal, P.M. (1987). Convergence in the Physical Appearance of Spouses. Motivation and Emotion, 11, 335-346.
Recommended Readings
Malin, S. (2004). Love at First Sight. New York: DK.
Scott, G. G. (2004). Do You Look Like Your Dog? New York: Broadway.
Glossary
Assortative Mating is mating which is not random but instead determined by similarities or dissimilarities between prospective mates.
Filial imprinting is imprinting (see below) by offspring.
Imprinting is a process by which impressionable young offspring are influenced by visual and auditory stimuli from a parent or foster parent, thereby determining the later behavior of the offspring.
Narcissism is love of oneself, a term derived from the Greek myth of Narcissus.
Physiognomic homogamy is mating based on facial likenesses (a term presumably first used by Griffiths & Kunz, 1973.
Sexual imprinting describes the influence of early imprinting on one?s future mate preferences.
By Stephen Bertman, Ph.D.
30-04-2008
The song Some Enchanted Evening from Rodgers and Hammerstein?s South Pacific warns us that, when it comes to explaining love at first sight, "Fools give you reasons. Wise men never try." Notwithstanding this lyrical warning, more and more psychologists are trying to solve this age-old mystery.
According to a recent survey, almost two out of three Americans believe in love at first sight (Naumann, 2001). The survey reported that over half of them have actually experienced it, and over half of those went on to marry the person they had instantly fallen in love with.
The concept of love at first sight goes all the way back to the days of the ancient Greeks, who worshiped a goddess they called Aphrodite. (The Romans would later call her Venus.) Aphrodite could overwhelm mere mortals with her immense power and take control of their lives by overriding both common sense and conscience. In one legendary case, a handsome Trojan prince named Paris fell in love with a beautiful Spartan queen named Helen, and she with him, the very first time they saw each other. The only problem was that Helen was already married. When the two lovers sailed away together to Troy, Helen?s husband assembled an armada to bring his wife back home ? leading the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe (1604) later to remark that Helen?s was "the face that launch?d a thousand ships." A war ensued that lasted ten years, and the epic poems that war inspired ? Homer?s Iliad and Odyssey ? would endure forever. As Naumann?s (2001) survey reveals, Aphrodite is alive and well today, still wielding her power over our lives.
Greek religion aside, how can we explain Helen and Paris? attraction for each other? According to legend, Paris was a divinely handsome hero, and Helen the most beautiful woman in all the world, so perhaps it was their extraordinary looks that drew them together. But in saying that, we?d have to admit simultaneously that not every Dick or Jack is as dashing as Paris, nor every Jane or Jill as stunning as Helen. Though beauty may well be in the eye of the beholder, the fact that ordinary Dicks and Janes, or Jacks and Jills, fall hopelessly in love the moment they see each other suggests that something other than simple aesthetics is at work. If so, what could that mysterious "something" be?
That Fabulous Face
If Helen had "the face that launch?d a thousand ships," maybe we should start with the human face in our quest for an answer. After all, when people meet, their faces are what they see first. Because of the multiple components that make up the human face and together give it its distinctiveness, our face is the one part of our body that, more than any other, expresses our personal identity. For that reason, the face is the image pressed with affection into so many leather wallets and echoed with passion in the lyrics of so many love songs.
But what is there about a face that could make it so hypnotically appealing? One nose, two lips, two eyes ? are such physical features sufficient in and of themselves to induce us to surrender our will and cosmically link our life with that of another human being? The answer seems to be yes, according to the findings of investigators.
The first striking phenomenon about faces and love is that so many people who are in love look alike, more so than chance would allow, and this has been documented empirically (Chambers, Christiansen, & Kunz, 1983; Griffiths & Kunz, 1973; Hinsz, 1989). Recently, Alvarez and Jaffe (2004) photographed 36 randomly selected couples and divided the photographs into six groups. Then, after cutting the pictures from each group in two, shuffling them, and placing them on a table, they invited a panel of neutral judges to match up the correct sexual partners in each group. The experiment was conducted as a double-blind test with neither the judges nor their supervisors knowing the right answers in advance.
According to chance, the judges should have averaged one correct match for every set of six pictures, about the same as guessing what double number would come up when a pair of dice is rolled. But instead of averaging one right match out of six, the judges got almost two out of six right each time. The close resemblances between sexual partners applied equally to those who were good-looking and to those who were not. In fact, the judges did well even when they were shown only the noses, eyes, or mouths of the test subjects. In short, the study seems to demonstrate that facial resemblances between romantic partners are significantly higher than mere chance would suggest.
In a separate study by psychologist Lisa M. DeBruine, people trusted strangers more when photographs of the strangers? faces were digitally altered by image manipulation software to more closely resemble their own (DeBruine, 2002, 2005). These results supported the findings of a comparable computer-graphics study in which individual subjects had preferred members of the opposite sex with face-shapes similar to their own (Penton-Voak, Perrett, & Pierce, 1999).
Though research has suggested the faces of older couples grow to look alike because they tend to mimic each other?s expressions (Zajonc, Adelmann, Murphy, & Niedenthal, 1987), other research has shown that striking facial resemblances are evident among couples who are young as well as old, including those who are engaged and haven?t yet married (Hinsz, 1989).
Additional support, albeit unscientific, for "like attracts like" was provided by British portrait painter Suzi Malin in her popular book, Love at First Sight. Intrigued by the facial likenesses between certain celebrity couples (between, for example, Elvis and Priscilla Presley, or Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston), Malin created a series of "split-screen" portraits by photographically pairing the right half of one lover?s face with the left half of the other?s. Malin?s erotic Rorschach blots dramatically convey the astonishing visual correspondences between famous lovers based on the notable similarities between their facial proportions and/or features. However, as the lives of such celebrity couples sadly demonstrate, facial resemblances may be responsible for mutual attraction in the beginning (through a process unromantically called physiognomic homogamy), but in the long run they may not be sufficiently strong to hold a relationship together.
Why Fido Looks Like Fred
Next door to Malin?s portrait gallery hangs a very different set of photographs collected by California-based sociologist Gini Graham Scott: over fifty photos, not of look-alike celebrity couples but of look-alike dogs and their owners. Scott?s pictures appear in her book, Do You Look Like Your Dog?, and can be seen on her amusing website Do You Look Like Your Dog?.
Of course, one swallow (or, in this case, one St. Bernard) does not a summer make. The impressive similarities we see in such pictures, far from being persuasive evidence that people regularly buy pets that resemble them, may simply be anomalies that, in and of themselves, don?t prove a thing, however funny or fascinating the correlations might appear.
However, empirical studies have corroborated Scott?s observations of pet and pet-owner similarity (Coren, 1999; Roy & Christenfeld, 2004, 2005). Their findings were further confirmed by a similar research project conducted by Payne and Jaffe (2005). While attending the National Canine Exposition in Caracas, Venezuela, they took pictures of purebred dogs and their owners. To eliminate any potential clues as to what dogs went with what owners, Payne and Jaffe (2005) used a special photographic process that retained each face but eliminated any tell-tale background.
Additionally, the researchers adjusted the images of pets and owners so all faces would be comparably sized. Having done that, they then picked 36 canine faces and 36 human faces and arranged the photos into six groups, each group containing six dogs and six owners. Finally, judges were asked to pair up the right dogs with the right owners in each set. As in the other studies, the judges paired up owners and dogs more successfully than mere chance would allow (Payne & Jaffe, 2005; Roy & Christenfeld, 2004). While mere chance would have resulted in about one right pick out of six, the judges averaged two, three, or even four correct picks out of six each time.
Thanks to these careful experiments with pets we now know that Scott?s perception that dogs and owners tend to look alike is supported by rigorous scientific research. But why do people buy dogs that resemble them? And why do human couples tend to resemble each other as well?
In Plato?s Symposium, the Greek playwright Aristophanes recounted a fascinating legend. According to the tale, when human beings were first created, they were comical roly-poly creatures with two faces, four arms, and four legs. The gods then split them in two. Therefore, claimed the playwright, we spend our lives desperately searching for the matching half that we need to complete us.
Are we then somehow cosmically programmed to seek our "other half", a half that is our mirror image? Are we somehow, despite the dictum that "opposites attract", subconsciously drawn to people who resemble us?
The Face in the Water
The ancient Greeks provided an answer of sorts in the myth of Narcissus. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Narcissus was an extraordinarily handsome but self-centered young man who spurned all his lovers. Finally, one of them cursed him by praying that someday Narcissus should himself feel the pain of unrequited love. One day while walking through the woods, Narcissus came upon a pond and gazed into its waters. As he did so, he saw the face of a handsome young man looking up at him. Desiring to embrace the beautiful youth, Narcissus dipped his hands into the water but, as he did, the image broke up. Each time he drew closer to the surface of the water, the object of his love seemed to draw closer to him but, each time he reached into its waters, the image again disappeared. Frustrated in his self-love, a despondent Narcissus continued to sit by the edge of the pond until he finally withered away and died. Even in death, Ovid tells us, Narcissus continued to gaze at his own image in the waters of the river Styx.
The myth of Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, and teaches us the mesmerizing power of self-love, a power that can ? if we are not vigilant ? consume and destroy us. To be mindlessly attracted to a replica of the familiar face in our mirror may, in fact, be a prescription for a broken heart.
The Birds and the Bees
In fact, it may not be the face we see in our mirror, our own face, that guides us in the choice of a mate. The face that functions as our erotic template may in fact be one we saw long before we ever knew what a mirror was.
The observations of British naturalist Spalding (1873) and German zoologist Heinroth (1910) paved the way for research on imprinting in chicks and goslings. When goslings were hatched in an incubator (and were thereby prevented from seeing their actual mothers), they instead became attached to the first human beings they saw, and responded to them as though the people were their parents. Heinroth concluded that the first image the goslings saw somehow became stamped or "imprinted" on their impressionable young brains.
This theory of imprinting was later elaborated by the Austrian zoologist Lorenz (1937) and in decades of subsequent research (Lorenz, 1937, (1988; (Todd & Miller, 1993). As a result of his close observation of ground-nesting birds like ducks and greylag geese, Lorenz concluded that imprinting occurs quickly, takes place only during a critically brief period of time (usually by the first morning after hatching), and is irreversible. Deprived of the sight or sound of its mother, a little duckling or gosling will "adopt" as its parent the first thing it sees and/or hears: a human being (especially if he or she quacks in response to a hatchling?s plaintive peep), or, strangely in the absence of a voice, even a silent inanimate object like a cardboard box, a red balloon, or a white ball. If young ducks or geese imprint on a human, they will affectionately follow in a gaggle wherever their "parent" leads, a phenomenon that was strikingly illustrated in 1993 when Canadian artist and inventor Bill Lishman helped forgetful geese migrate 400 miles from Ontario to Virginia by training them to follow his ultralight airplane, and again the next year when he led another flock of avian amnesiacs by air all the way to South Carolina. By using imprinting to induce the geese to follow his airplane, Lishman became "Father Goose". His aerial exploits are described in his autobiography and were imaginatively and poignantly reenacted in the 1996 family film Fly Away Home, starring Jeff Daniels. Lorenz? basic theory of filial imprinting is now well documented and accepted by the scientific community. Investigators have even identified the part of a bird?s brain that enables a chick to imprint (Horn, 1998; McCabe & Nicol, 1999).
In addition to advancing the theory of filial imprinting, Lorenz also proposed a theory of sexual imprinting. According to this theory, the image imprinted on the brain of the young animal (originally designed by nature to make it easier for an offspring to identify and find its nurturing parent) also has the effect of defining and determining its mating preferences in the future. Thus, upon becoming sexually mature, the young animal seeks out a mate that closely resembles the parental imprint implanted in its brain.
A Lasting Impression
What, you may justifiably ask, does all this have to do with my love-life? If I fall in love at first sight, will I be acting like a "bird-brain"?? Well, perhaps. Birds and human beings are, after all, both links in evolution?s chain, though there is a huge biological gap between them.
Recent research, however, suggests that imprinting does indeed influence our choice of mates. People?s faces have been shown to resemble not only their sexual partners? faces but also the faces of their own parents of the opposite sex, especially when it comes to hair color and eye color (Bereczkei, Gyuris, Koves, & Bernath, 2002; Little, Penton-Voak, Burt, & Perrett, 2003). The age of our parents also seems to influence our choice of mate, with females born to older parents being attracted to the faces of older men, and males born to older parents being drawn to the faces of older women (Perrett, Penton-Voak, Little, Tiddeman, Burt, Schmidt et al., 2002). Furthermore, daughters who were adopted between two and eight years old, or who rated their childhood relationships with their fathers highly, chose husbands whose faces looked like those of the fathers who raised them (Bereczkei, Gyuris, & Weisfeld, 2004; Wiszewska, Pawlowski, & Boothroyd, 2007).
Thus, it?s entirely possible that the person who made the most lasting visual impression on you when you were a young child or infant ? a parent, a sibling, or even a nanny ? unknowingly drew the mental roadmap to your romantic future. Your search for Mr. or Ms. Right might simply be an exercise, albeit a risky one, in post-hypnotic suggestion.
References
Alvarez, L., & Jaffe, K. (2004). Narcissism Guides Mate Selection: Humans Mate Assortatively, as Revealed by Facial Resemblance, Following an Algorithm of ?Self Seeking Like.? Evolutionary Psychology, 2, 177-194.
Bereczkei, T, Gyuris, P., Koves, P. & Bernath, L. (2002). Homogamy, Genetic Similarity, and Imprinting: Parental Influence on Mate Choice Preferences. Personality and Individual Differences, 33, 677-690.
Bereczkei, T., Gyuris, P. & Weisfeld, G.E. (2004). Sexual Imprinting in Human Mate Choice. Proceedings of the Royal British Society of London, Biology, 271, 1129-1134.
Chambers, V.J., Christiansen, J.R. & Kunz, P.R. (1983). Physiognomic Homogamy: A Test of Physical Similarity as a Factor in the Mate Selection Process. Social Biology, 30, 151-157.
Coren, S. (1999). Do People Look Like Their Dogs? Anthrozoos, 12, 111-114.
Debruine, L.M. (2002). Facial Resemblance Enhances Trust. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biology, 269, 1307-1312.
Debruine, L. M. (2005). Trustworthy but not Lust-worthy: Context-specific Effects of Facial Resemblance. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biology, 272, 919-922.
Griffiths, R.W. & Kunz, P.R. (1973). Assortative Mating: A Study of Physiognomic Homogamy. Social Biology, 20, 448-453.
Heinroth, O. (1910). Beitr?ge zur Biologie, namentlich Ethologie und Psychologie der Anatiden. Verhandlungen der 5 International Ornithologisch Kongress, Berlin, 589-702.
Hinsz, V.B. (1989). Facial Resemblance in Engaged and Married Couples. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 6, 223-229.
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Lishman, W. (1996). Father Goose. New York: Crown.
Little, A. C., Penton-Voak, I. S., Burt, D. M. & Perrett, D. I. (2003). Investigating an Imprinting-Like Phenomenon in Humans: Partners and Opposite-Sex Parents Have Similar Hair and Eye Colour. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 43-51.
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Marlowe, C. (1604). The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Act V, Scene i, line 96.
McCabe, B.J., & Nicol, A.U. (1999). The Recognition Memory of Imprinting: Biochemistry and Electrophysiology. Behavioral Brain Research, 98, 253-260.
Naumann, E. (2001). Love at First Sight. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.
Ovid. (1st century B.C.E.). The Metamorphoses, Book III.
Payne, C. & Jaffe, K. (2005). Self Seeks Like: Many Humans Choose Their Dog Pets Filling Rules Used for Assortative Mating. Journal of Ethology, 23, 5-18.
Penton-Voak, I.S., Perrett, D.I. & Pierce, J.W. (1999) Computer Graphic Studies of the Role of Facial Similarity in Judgements of Attractiveness. Current Psychology: Learning, Personality, Social, 18, 104-117.
Perrett, D.I., Penton-Voak, I.S., Little, A.C., Tiddeman, B.P., Burt, D.M., Schmidt, N., Oxley, R., Kinloch, N. & Barrett, L. (2002). Facial Attractiveness Judgements Reflect Learning of Parental Age Characteristics. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biology, 269, 873-880.
Plato. (4th century B.C.E.). The Symposium, 17-19.
Roy, M.M. & Christenfeld, N.J.S. (2004). Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners? Psychological Science, 15, 361-363.
Roy, M.M. & Christenfeld, N.J.S. (2005). Dogs Still Resemble Their Owners. Psychological Science, 16, 743-744.
Spalding, D.A. (1873). Instinct, with Original Observations on Young Animals. Macmillan?s Magazine, reprinted in Animal Behavior, 2 (1954), 2-11.
Todd, P.M. & Miller, G.F. (1993). Parental Guidance Suggested: How Parental Imprinting Evolves through Sexual Selection as an Adaptive Learning Mechanism. Adaptive Behavior, 2, 5-47.
Wiszewska, A., Pawlowski, B. & Boothroyd, L.G. (2007). Father-Daughter Relationship as a Moderator of Sexual Imprinting: A Facialmetric Study. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 248-252.
Zajonc, R.B., Adelmann, P.K., Murphy, S.T. & Niedenthal, P.M. (1987). Convergence in the Physical Appearance of Spouses. Motivation and Emotion, 11, 335-346.
Recommended Readings
Malin, S. (2004). Love at First Sight. New York: DK.
Scott, G. G. (2004). Do You Look Like Your Dog? New York: Broadway.
Glossary
Assortative Mating is mating which is not random but instead determined by similarities or dissimilarities between prospective mates.
Filial imprinting is imprinting (see below) by offspring.
Imprinting is a process by which impressionable young offspring are influenced by visual and auditory stimuli from a parent or foster parent, thereby determining the later behavior of the offspring.
Narcissism is love of oneself, a term derived from the Greek myth of Narcissus.
Physiognomic homogamy is mating based on facial likenesses (a term presumably first used by Griffiths & Kunz, 1973.
Sexual imprinting describes the influence of early imprinting on one?s future mate preferences.
