magazine issue 6 2008 / Issue 7

Love at First Sight

• written by Stephen Bertman
• edited by Helen Lee Lin

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

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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.

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Naumann, E. (2001). Love at First Sight. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.