Do opposites really attract?

If you grew up on planet earth you’ve probably heard the phrase “Opposites Attract”. With movies, books, and even a song of the same name, it’s a pretty unavoidable phrase, but is there any truth to it? Are we really attracted to those dissimilar to us? Well let’s find out…

The case for “Opposites Attract”.

The theory behind opposites attract is that we as humans subconsciously look for those who make up for our weaknesses. If I’m good at thing #1 and bad thing #2 and I meet a girl who’s bad at thing #1 but good at thing #2, then in theory we’d be a great match because we’d make up for each others weaknesses. Makes sense in theory, but as I’m sure most of you know, that doesn’t mean it’s true.

What the data says.

The first source I looked at was an article by data scientist Emma Pierson in which she analyzed over a million matches on the site eHarmony and 102 traits the users listed on their profiles. These traits ranged from hard stats such as, height and income, to habits such as, how much users drink and smoke, to what users think about themselves, do they think they’re creative or not. She found that unequivocally opposites do not attract.

Among the 102 traits, she found that women were more likely to match with a man, if he was similar to her, on every single trait. Not a single one of the 102 traits was a trait in which opposites attracted. Pretty crazy.

It’s worth noting, men cared less about a woman being similar to them then women did about a man being similar to them, but none the less men were still clearly attracted to similarity.

We see the same thing again with ethnicity on OkCupid with every ethnicity favouring they’re own the most.

And again in a study analysis of hinge users. This study looked at over 400 million matches on hinge and found that similarity led to a higher probability of matching in just about every category. Even seemingly insignificant things such as having the same initials led to a significant increase in match probability(11.3% in the case of same initials) showing the effects similarity are both impactful and subconscious…

My experience.

So the data says opposites don’t attract and it’s actually similarities that attract, and my experience gives me no reason to think otherwise.

I’m pretty tall, 6’2^_5/8 ” to be precise, and of all the partners I’ve been with the average height is almost 5’7”, 3 inches taller than the average height of women in my country.

I have green eyes, they’re pretty rare statistically speaking being only 12.5% of my countries population, and yet out of all the partners I’ve been with 33% had green eyes.

I didn’t consciously elect to date more tall women than short women, nor more green eyed than blue eyed women, but through the subconscious forces of human biology, it just happened.

How to take advantage of this.

As I’m sure you can guess, the best way to take advantage of similarities effect on attractiveness is to surround yourself with and shoot your shot with people more similar to you.

If you’re Jewish, whether you individually like jewish women or not you will have the most success at jewish dating events and on jewish dating sites(Jdate, Jswipe, etc.).

If you’re tall and white and you go to a bar, you will have the highest percent chance of success approaching tall, white, women(You can trust me on this one lol).

It’s a pretty simple concept and yet it can improve your chances of success pretty significantly if properly taken advantage of. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t shoot your shot with a woman you find attractive who isn’t particularly similar to you, but understand that the chances she likes you back are lower than that of a equally attractive woman who is very similar to you.

As usual I hope you got something useful out of this and I’ll see you next Thursday.