Short Stuff: Look-Alike Old Couples

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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to the short Stuff. There's Jerry, Chuck me.
Josh is short stuff. This is short go. And we're
all starting to look alike here on our eleventh anniversary.
We really are. We've all kind of morphed into this
weird like, um, well this is a morphous blob. How
about that we don't even look like we've actually physically

(00:26):
merged together. Yeah. So do old people look alike old couples?
That is right? Right, that's a big one, because yes,
there's probably some old people you could find randomly in
the crowd and be like this kind of looks like
this person, and we probably old people anymore either, right,
we should probably say seniors. Yes, elderly elderly, senior adults,

(00:50):
I think is what it is actually a good call.
I mean I'm right around the corner from being the right,
so I'm like, I don't like saying old people, right exactly.
Um so, okay, so senior adults anyway, an older couple,
that's what we're gonna say. A couple that's lived together,
married or in some sort of partnership, romantic or otherwise

(01:10):
for a very long time. They do tend to start
to look alike. The older they get, and there's actual
science to to back this up. This isn't just some
you know, random hilarity there. 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 should come

(01:33):
to like look like one another over the years, it's
it's a little odd, even though you know 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 the thing, because I've never really noticed this. Um, yeah,
I have. Actually, there's I've seen some couples that I'm like,

(01:56):
I think you guys are brother and sister, and it's
a little unsettling because they usually seem happy and they're
holding hands. But it's uh 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

(02:18):
science really points to like necessarily looking like one another,
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, Uh,
there was a study called Personality and Individual Differences or

(02:42):
I'm sorry that was the magazine that was published in
the rag that you can find on news stands all
over the country, right. Uh, and they serve a twenty
They got twenty two people, Um, I guess, eleven men
and eleven women who participated in the study. And they said,
look at these hundreds. He married couples, but you know

(03:02):
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 it was um who who looks alike? Um,
who's married to who? And what they found was that
people tended to pick married couples out even though they
weren't showing pictures. And since they've shown the men's pictures

(03:22):
and they're showing the women's pictures, that was basically like
put them together, and people tended to do that. Also. Um.
They also judged them based on attractiveness, and they 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 the fact that the fact that
you could, um, you could you a random stranger could

(03:47):
pick these couples out and and more often than chance
get it right. Put pairing who was married who just
based on looks definitely suggests that there's something there, and
there's 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 because they make a point in this article that, like,

(04:09):
you know, if your personalities are similar, which is probably
you know, you generally seek out someone who you think
with 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 nineteen sixty,

(04:31):
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 and 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, Like it was the
first goon who put on a big smile in a
photo and everyone's like, what did you just do? What

(04:52):
is that You're supposed to frown in pictures? Young man?
Can I subscribe to your newsletter? But uh, as far
as um 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 uh similarly similar genetically as themselves,

(05:16):
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, um, which is uh you know.
So some people would say, okay, well you should stick
with your own kind and and and not marry outside

(05:36):
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 we might be able to genetically

(05:56):
be more genetically compatible with the question is this though
beyond say, something glaringly obvious is somebody saying, like, um,
you know, just sticking to their ethnic group or racial
group or something like that to 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 um

(06:19):
compatible with you genetically? This is like, so there's we've
got the question of how to 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, and we'll come back and talk
about sexual imprinting right after this. So I promised talk

(07:06):
of sexual imprinting about sixty seconds ago. And there's this
thing and and it's not just like something people say,
it's there's a real thing where they've done studies and
found that women, Um, I was gonna say generally, but
studies indicate that women, if they if they have fathers,
that they were close to and that they love that,

(07:26):
they will seek out adult relationships with men who are
like their fathers, and then includes looking like their fathers,
looking like their father's, behaving like their fathers, Like if
their father was stern but kind, you know, they will
probably look for that and a mate if their father
was like, hey you, you do you. But the the
key seems to be that the father and the daughter's

(07:48):
bond and relationship is 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,
not that, no, But but it's what that gets confused
for is it's actually the father has provided a model saying, hey,

(08:09):
I'm genetically related to you. You turned up 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

(08:30):
imprint on their genetic fathers. Oh no, I thought, I said,
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 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

(08:52):
don't I don't think that's a that's an interesting can
of worms there that we're not going to completely open. Okay,
all right, UM, so are some other things that we
can so that. That's one that for women in particular,
the sexual imprinting on the fathers one way that they
are guided toward mate selection. Right. There's also UM personalities
another one. There's a genetic basis for that behavior's traits. UM.

(09:16):
There's all sorts of stuff that you can pick up
in somebody's face, UM, 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 UM genetically sound I guess in one way. And
one of the big ones is symmetry. Both body symmetry
and facial symmetry is a classic UM standard for for

(09:40):
just universal beauty. Symmetry tends to be equated with beauty
and attractiveness. Yeah, we've talked about this quite a bit
in the past two Um, they've done studies and test
subjects kind of roundly rate symmetrical men and women as
not only um like just better looking, more attractive to them,
but potentially healthier. And they say that the whole you know,

(10:00):
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 chains, and
women are seeking women who can carry their child and
they even have It's such a gross term, but um, supposedly,
you know, they've done studies where men prefer women with

(10:21):
a waste to hip ratio a point seven, which sounds
just like, I don't know, this sounds like something some
creep would carry around like a notebook and like some
calipers or something like that. Yeah, and be like, you're
really nice and funny at all, but you're waste to
hip ratio is not quite right for me. Well, it
goes both ways too. There's a preferred waste to hip

(10:42):
ratio ratio among men for women or women that women
have for men and supposedly that sounds really bizarre, but um,
that has a lot to do with fat deposits. Where
fat gets deposited around your hips depending on your sex
and x is driven by hormones, and especially fat deposition

(11:03):
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, you were basically
broadcasting that you are quite fertile and feaking and ready
to raise ten kids and start a farm. Let's do
this is what your hips are shouting. Well, what you're doing.
What you want is to seek someone out that you

(11:25):
can raise, uh, have a lot of and raise future
little employees. Basically, yeah, exactly Uh. And back to the
symmetry thing. Um. They have found also in studies that
the more symmetrical you are, um, you're also gonna have
more sex and more sexual partners in your life, especially

(11:45):
if you're a man, or particularly if you're a man. Yeah. Yeah, um,
So it does seem to come down the answer to
this question why senior adult couples uh 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 shaped them together. So you

(12:08):
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.
There is that thing too, where couples inadvertently I guess
start to dress or maybe very purposefully start to dress
a like. I got no problems with that, baby, uh.

(12:31):
And then dog look alikes we should finish with, because
everyone loves those great listicles photos of people that look
like their dogs, and that is a thing that can happen. Uh.
And they did a study in two thousand four. I
don't know how this got funded, um, but it apparently
indicated that people who shop for pure bred dogs uh

(12:52):
tend to look for dogs that look like them. Yeah.
I want 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 pure bread. Is only people
who like rescue, you know, MutS from shelters or they're
like whatever, I just like, how your your personality? I
guess that's right. So, um, there you go, there you

(13:13):
have it. I guess that means chuck. Then short stuff
is a way Stuff you Should Know is a production
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