Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Look-Alike Old Couples

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

You know how some older married couples (sorry, senior adult married couples) start to look alike over time? That’s a really weird phenomenon if you think about it. So science has looked into it and they think they kind of have it figured out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the short stuff. There's Jerry, Chuck, me, Josh, the short stuff. This is short.

Go. And we're all starting to look alike here on our 11th anniversary. We really are. We've all kind of morphed into this weird, like, well, just amorphous blob. How about that? We don't even look like we've actually

physically merged together. Ew. Yeah. So, do old people look alike? Old couples, that is. Right, right. That's a big one. Yeah.

Because, yes, there's probably some old people you could find randomly in a crowd and be like, this kind of looks like this person. And we probably should take old people anymore, either, right? We should probably say seniors. Yes, elderly. Senior adults, I think, is what it is, actually.

Good call. I mean, I'm right around the corner from being them. Right. I'm like, I don't like saying old people. Right, exactly. So, OK, so senior adults. Anyway, an older couple, that's what we're going to say. A couple that's lived together, married

or in some sort of partnership, romantic or otherwise, for a very long time, they do tend to start to look alike, the older they get. And there's actual science to back this up. This isn't just some random hilarity. They've actually done studies about this, because it's kind of a weird thing. If you think about it, we take it for granted.

But the idea that two people who are not related should come to look like one another over the years, it's a little odd, even though it seems like, yeah, of course, that's what happens. But why, Chuck, why is the big question? Well, first of all, I have a question for you. Have you noticed this? Do you think this is a thing?

Because I've never really noticed this. Yeah, I have, actually. I've seen some couples that I'm like, I think you guys are brother and sister. Okay. And it's a little unsettling, because they usually seem happy and they're holding hands, but it's, no, I have definitely seen it before.

I don't know. I'm just trying to think in my life, like my grandparents didn't look alike and I don't know. I'm trying to piece it together. I do like the science here, because not much of the science really points to like necessarily looking like one another. Right.

But let's talk about it. Okay, so, and I think also just to kind of clarify your point, it's not like it's an inevitability. Sure. But it does happen and the fact that it does happen still raises the question, why? Yeah, so there was a study called Personality and Individual Differences,

or I'm sorry, that was the magazine it was published in, The Rag, that you can find on newsstands all over the country. Right. And they surveyed 20, they got 22 people, I guess 11 men and 11 women who participated in the study. Yes. And they said, look at these 160 married couples,

but you know, they're separate. You don't know like who's in a couple. And then tell us what you think, go. Right, right. It was who looks alike, who's married to who. And what they found was that people tended to pick married couples out, even though they weren't shown pictures

and they've shown the men's pictures and they've shown the women's pictures and it was basically like put them together. And people tended to do that also. They also judge them based on attractiveness. And the people also tended to be rated along the same line. So like a seven typically was paired up with a seven. So the fact that you could,

a random stranger could pick these couples out and more often than chance, get it right, pairing who was married to who just based on looks, definitely suggests that there's something there. And the something there that they believe that is really behind it is mostly genetics. Yeah, I mean, there is, non-genetically speaking, I do think there is something to the fact,

cause they make a point in this article that like, you know, if your personalities are similar, which is probably, you know, you generally seek out someone who you think would jibe personality wise, you may end up being a couple who just laughs a lot and enjoys life and that would affect the same facial muscles and things like that. Or if you look at any picture like pre 1960,

all you see is two dour looking senior adults standing next to each other. So they may look a little bit more like, although I think we've done something on people smiling in pictures or maybe we just talked about it briefly, but that'd be a good shorty I think. Yeah, surely, I don't recall that at all. I think it was the first goon who put on a big smile

in a photo and everyone was like, what did you just do? What is that? You're supposed to frown in pictures, young man. Can I subscribe to your newsletter? But as far as genetics go, and we've talked about a lot of this here and there on the show about people seeking out for life partners and sexual and reproductive partners,

people that are more similar genetically as themselves. Right, right, which makes sense. The idea, the whole premise is that we would seek those people out because our genes have kind of co-evolved together, so they fit together, they work together more readily. Yeah. Which is, you know, so some people would say,

oh, okay, well you should stick with your own kind and not marry outside of your own group or whatever. But the opposite of that is when you get too much homogeneity, the gene pool starts to really, really suffer. So it's good to mix. But at the same time, we seem to be geared, at least according to this school of thought, toward seeking out mates that we might be able

to genetically be more genetically compatible with. The question is this, though. Beyond, say, something glaringly obvious is somebody saying like, you know, just sticking to their ethnic group or racial group or something like that to marry and have kids with. How else would you, like if you're not doing that, how would you possibly pick out somebody based on genetics?

Like how would you know how someone's compatible with you genetically? And this is like, so there's, we've got the question of how do old, I'm sorry, senior adult couples start to look alike. But then if it's genetics, how do we find that out? You know, like what are we doing? All right, that seems like a good spot for a break.

Okay. And we'll come back and talk about sexual imprinting right after this. Oh, the stuff we learn from Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, I promised talk of sexual imprinting about 60 seconds ago. And there's this thing, and it's not just like something people say. There's a real thing where they've done studies and found that women, I was going to say generally, but studies indicate that women, if they have fathers that they were close to and that they love, that they will seek out adult relationships with men

who are like their fathers, and that includes looking like their fathers. Looking like their fathers, behaving like their fathers, like if their father was stern, but kind, you know, they will probably look for that in a maid. If their father was like, hey, you do you, but the key seems to be that the father and the daughter's bond and relationship is very strong.

And the stronger it is, the more of this sexual imprinting there is. And so rather than like the girl, you know, secretly having the hots for her dad or something like that. Yeah, it was not that. No, but it's what that gets confused for, is it's actually the father has provided a model saying, hey, I'm genetically related to you.

You turned out pretty good. We have a pretty good relationship. Find a guy who's kind of like me and you can't miss the genetic crap shoot. Yeah, and not even genetically, because the same has held true through adoptive fathers and daughters they found in studies as well.

Well, no, I think they were saying adopted daughters imprint on their genetic fathers. Oh, no, I thought I read it as they still... I got you, I got you. Yeah, you're right, that would be the case. But then that kind of undermines the genetic basis of it, doesn't it? Well, a little bit,

but that's the nature-nurture thing, you know. Yeah, well, this whole thing is one big question of like nature-nurture. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think that's an interesting can of worms there that we're not gonna completely open. Okay, all right. So there's some other things that we can...

So that's one, that for women in particular, the sexual imprinting on the father is one way that they are guided toward mate selection, right? Yeah. There's also personalities in other ones. There's a genetic basis for that, behaviors, traits. There's all sorts of stuff that you can pick up in somebody's face, in their body shape, their body style,

that suggests not necessarily that their genes are going to mix well with your particular genes, but that they are genetically sound, I guess, in one way. And one of the big ones is symmetry, both body symmetry and facial symmetry. It's a classic standard for just universal beauty. Symmetry tends to be equated with beauty and attractiveness. Yeah, we've talked about this quite a bit in the past too.

They've done studies and test subjects kind of roundly rate symmetrical men and women as not only just better looking and more attractive to them, but potentially healthier. And they say that's the whole evolutionary basis of a lot of this is whether we know it or not, we're technically probably seeking out people that we think are healthy and have good genes

and women are seeking women who can carry their child and they even have, it's such a gross term, but supposedly they've done studies where men prefer women with a waist to hip ratio, a 0.7, which sounds just like, I don't know, this sounds like something some creep would carry around like a notebook. Some calipers or something like that.

Yeah, and be like, you're really nice and funny and all, but your waist to hip ratio is not quite right for me. Well, it goes both ways too. There's a preferred waist to hip ratio among men for women or women that women have for men. And supposedly that sounds really bizarre, but that has a lot to do with fat deposits where fat gets deposited around your hips

depending on your sex. And sex is driven by hormones and especially fat deposition and where it goes is driven by hormones. So if you have your fat building up in all the right places, according to your sex, you were basically broadcasting that you are quite fertile and feakin'

and ready to raise 10 kids and start a farm. Let's do this, is what your hips are shouting at everybody. What you want is to seek someone out that you can raise, have a lot of and raise future little employees. Basically, yeah, but you don't have to pay. Yeah, exactly. And back to the symmetry thing,

they have found also in studies that the more symmetrical you are, you're also gonna have more sex and more sexual partners in your life. Especially if you're a man, or particularly if you're a man. Yeah. Yeah. So it does seem to come down the answer to this question.

Why senior adult couples can sometimes start to look like one another is that they are probably genetically similar to begin with. Yeah. And then they go through life experiences together that shapes them together. So you put all that together,

you've got an older senior adult couple who looks like brother and sister and they still kiss in front of people. Yeah, you put that all together, throw them both in lavender track suits, which always helps. Yeah. There is that thing too,

where couples inadvertently, I guess, start to dress, or maybe very purposefully start to dress alike. Sure. I got no problems with that, baby. And then dog look-alikes we should finish with because everyone loves those great listicles of photos of people that look like their dogs.

And that is the thing that can happen. And they did a study in 2004, I don't know how this got funded, but it apparently indicated that people who shop for purebred dogs tend to look for dogs that look like them. Yeah. I want to see my face looking back at me

in my dog's face. Yeah, I've seen it. But they say that it's purebreds only, people who like rescue months from shelters and they're like, whatever, I just like how your personality, I guess. That's right. So there you go.

There you have it. I guess that means, Chuck, then short stuff is away. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.