Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the short Stuff. There's Jerry, Chuck me.
Speaker 1: Josh is short stuff. This is short go. And we're
Speaker 1: all starting to look alike here on our eleventh anniversary.
Speaker 1: We really are. We've all kind of morphed into this
Speaker 1: weird like, um, well this is a morphous blob. How
Speaker 1: about that we don't even look like we've actually physically
Speaker 1: merged together. Yeah. So do old people look alike old couples?
Speaker 1: That is right? Right, that's a big one, because yes,
Speaker 1: there's probably some old people you could find randomly in
Speaker 1: the crowd and be like this kind of looks like
Speaker 1: this person, and we probably old people anymore either, right,
Speaker 1: we should probably say seniors. Yes, elderly elderly, senior adults,
Speaker 1: I think is what it is actually a good call.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm right around the corner from being the right,
Speaker 1: so I'm like, I don't like saying old people, right exactly.
Speaker 1: Um so, okay, so senior adults anyway, an older couple,
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna say. A couple that's lived together,
Speaker 1: married or in some sort of partnership, romantic or otherwise
Speaker 1: for a very long time. They do tend to start
Speaker 1: to look alike. The older they get, and there's actual
Speaker 1: science to to back this up. This isn't just some
Speaker 1: you know, random hilarity there. They've actually done studies about this.
Speaker 1: Because it's kind of a weird thing if you think
Speaker 1: about it. We take it for granted, but the idea
Speaker 1: that two people who are not related should should come
Speaker 1: to like look like one another over the years, it's
Speaker 1: it's a little odd, even though you know it seems like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that's what happens. But why, Chuck, Why is
Speaker 1: the big question? Well, first of all, I have a
Speaker 1: question for you. Have you noticed this? Do you think
Speaker 1: this is the thing, because I've never really noticed this. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have. Actually, there's I've seen some couples that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I think you guys are brother and sister, and it's
Speaker 1: a little unsettling because they usually seem happy and they're
Speaker 1: holding hands. But it's uh no, I have definitely seen
Speaker 1: it before. I don't know. I'm just trying to think
Speaker 1: in my life, like my grandparents didn't look alike, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm trying to piece it together. I
Speaker 1: do like the science here, because not much of the
Speaker 1: science really points to like necessarily looking like one another,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about it, okay. So, and I think
Speaker 1: also just to kind of clarify your point, it's not
Speaker 1: like it's an inevitability, sure, but it does happen, and
Speaker 1: the fact that it does happen still raises the question why. Yeah. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a study called Personality and Individual Differences or
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that was the magazine that was published in
Speaker 1: the rag that you can find on news stands all
Speaker 1: over the country, right. Uh, and they serve a twenty
Speaker 1: They got twenty two people, Um, I guess, eleven men
Speaker 1: and eleven women who participated in the study. And they said,
Speaker 1: look at these hundreds. He married couples, but you know
Speaker 1: they're separate. You don't know like who's in a couple,
Speaker 1: and then tell us what you think, go right right?
Speaker 1: It was it was um who who looks alike? Um,
Speaker 1: who's married to who? And what they found was that
Speaker 1: people tended to pick married couples out even though they
Speaker 1: weren't showing pictures. And since they've shown the men's pictures
Speaker 1: and they're showing the women's pictures, that was basically like
Speaker 1: put them together, and people tended to do that. Also. Um.
Speaker 1: They also judged them based on attractiveness, and they the
Speaker 1: people also tended to be rated along the same line,
Speaker 1: so like a seven typically was paired up with a seven.
Speaker 1: So the fact that the fact that the fact that
Speaker 1: you could, um, you could you a random stranger could
Speaker 1: pick these couples out and and more often than chance
Speaker 1: get it right. Put pairing who was married who just
Speaker 1: based on looks definitely suggests that there's something there, and
Speaker 1: there's something there that they believe that is really behind
Speaker 1: it is mostly genetics, yeah, I mean there is non
Speaker 1: genetically speaking. I do think there is something to the
Speaker 1: fact because they make a point in this article that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if your personalities are similar, which is probably
Speaker 1: you know, you generally seek out someone who you think
Speaker 1: with jibe personality wise, you may end up being a
Speaker 1: couple who just laughs a lot and enjoys life, and
Speaker 1: that would affect the same facial muscles and things like that.
Speaker 1: Or if you look at any picture like pre nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: all you see is two dour looking senior adults standing
Speaker 1: next to each other, so they may look a little
Speaker 1: bit more like although I think we've done something on
Speaker 1: people smiling and pictures, or maybe we just talked about
Speaker 1: it briefly, but that'd be a good shorty, I think, yeah, surely.
Speaker 1: I don't recall that at all, Like it was the
Speaker 1: first goon who put on a big smile in a
Speaker 1: photo and everyone's like, what did you just do? What
Speaker 1: is that You're supposed to frown in pictures? Young man?
Speaker 1: Can I subscribe to your newsletter? But uh, as far
Speaker 1: as um genetics go, and we've talked about a lot
Speaker 1: of this here and there on the show, about people
Speaker 1: seeking out for life partners and sexual and reproductive partners,
Speaker 1: people that are more uh similarly similar genetically as themselves,
Speaker 1: right right, which makes sense. The idea, the whole premise
Speaker 1: is that we would seek those people out because our
Speaker 1: genes have kind of co evolved together, so they fit together,
Speaker 1: they work together more readily, um, which is uh you know.
Speaker 1: So some people would say, okay, well you should stick
Speaker 1: with your own kind and and and not marry outside
Speaker 1: of your own group or whatever. But the opposite of
Speaker 1: that is when you get too much homogeneity, the gene
Speaker 1: pool starts to really really suffer. So it's good to mix,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, we seem to be geared,
Speaker 1: at least according to this school of thought toward seeking
Speaker 1: out mates that we we might be able to genetically
Speaker 1: be more genetically compatible with the question is this though
Speaker 1: beyond say, something glaringly obvious is somebody saying, like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, just sticking to their ethnic group or racial
Speaker 1: group or something like that to to marry and have
Speaker 1: kids with. How else would you, like, if you're not
Speaker 1: doing that, how would you possibly pick out somebody based
Speaker 1: on genetics? Like? How would you know how someone's um
Speaker 1: compatible with you genetically? This is like, so there's we've
Speaker 1: got the question of how to old I'm sorry, senior
Speaker 1: adult couples start to look alike. But then if it's genetics,
Speaker 1: how do we find that out? You know, like, what
Speaker 1: are we doing? All Right? That seems like a good
Speaker 1: spot for a break, and we'll come back and talk
Speaker 1: about sexual imprinting right after this. So I promised talk
Speaker 1: of sexual imprinting about sixty seconds ago. And there's this
Speaker 1: thing and and it's not just like something people say,
Speaker 1: it's there's a real thing where they've done studies and
Speaker 1: found that women, Um, I was gonna say generally, but
Speaker 1: studies indicate that women, if they if they have fathers,
Speaker 1: that they were close to and that they love that,
Speaker 1: they will seek out adult relationships with men who are
Speaker 1: like their fathers, and then includes looking like their fathers,
Speaker 1: looking like their father's, behaving like their fathers, Like if
Speaker 1: their father was stern but kind, you know, they will
Speaker 1: probably look for that and a mate if their father
Speaker 1: was like, hey you, you do you. But the the
Speaker 1: key seems to be that the father and the daughter's
Speaker 1: bond and relationship is is very strong, and the stronger
Speaker 1: it is, the more of this sexual imprinting there is.
Speaker 1: And so rather than like the girl, you know, secretly
Speaker 1: having the hots for her dad or something like that,
Speaker 1: not that, no, But but it's what that gets confused
Speaker 1: for is it's actually the father has provided a model saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm genetically related to you. You turned up pretty good,
Speaker 1: We have a pretty good relationship. Find a guy who's
Speaker 1: kind of like me, and you can't miss the genetic crap. Shoot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not even genetically, because the same has held true
Speaker 1: through adoptive fathers and daughters they found in studies as
Speaker 1: well well. No, I think they were saying adopted daughters
Speaker 1: imprint on their genetic fathers. Oh no, I thought, I said,
Speaker 1: I thought I read it as they still I got you,
Speaker 1: I got you. Yeah, you're right, that would be the case.
Speaker 1: But then that kind of undermines the genetic basis of it,
Speaker 1: doesn't it a little bit. But that's the nature nurture thing,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, well, this whole thing is one big
Speaker 1: question of like nature nurture. Yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think that's a that's an interesting can
Speaker 1: of worms there that we're not going to completely open. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, UM, so are some other things that we
Speaker 1: can so that. That's one that for women in particular,
Speaker 1: the sexual imprinting on the fathers one way that they
Speaker 1: are guided toward mate selection. Right. There's also UM personalities
Speaker 1: another one. There's a genetic basis for that behavior's traits. UM.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of stuff that you can pick up
Speaker 1: in somebody's face, UM, in their body shape, their body
Speaker 1: style that suggests not necessarily that their genes are going
Speaker 1: to mix well with your particular genes, but that they
Speaker 1: are UM genetically sound I guess in one way. And
Speaker 1: one of the big ones is symmetry. Both body symmetry
Speaker 1: and facial symmetry is a classic UM standard for for
Speaker 1: just universal beauty. Symmetry tends to be equated with beauty
Speaker 1: and attractiveness. Yeah, we've talked about this quite a bit
Speaker 1: in the past two Um, they've done studies and test
Speaker 1: subjects kind of roundly rate symmetrical men and women as
Speaker 1: not only um like just better looking, more attractive to them,
Speaker 1: but potentially healthier. And they say that the whole you know,
Speaker 1: evolutionary basis of a lot of this is, whether we
Speaker 1: know it or not, we're technically probably seeking out people
Speaker 1: that we think are healthy and have good chains, and
Speaker 1: women are seeking women who can carry their child and
Speaker 1: they even have It's such a gross term, but um, supposedly,
Speaker 1: you know, they've done studies where men prefer women with
Speaker 1: a waste to hip ratio a point seven, which sounds
Speaker 1: just like, I don't know, this sounds like something some
Speaker 1: creep would carry around like a notebook and like some
Speaker 1: calipers or something like that. Yeah, and be like, you're
Speaker 1: really nice and funny at all, but you're waste to
Speaker 1: hip ratio is not quite right for me. Well, it
Speaker 1: goes both ways too. There's a preferred waste to hip
Speaker 1: ratio ratio among men for women or women that women
Speaker 1: have for men and supposedly that sounds really bizarre, but um,
Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with fat deposits. Where
Speaker 1: fat gets deposited around your hips depending on your sex
Speaker 1: and x is driven by hormones, and especially fat deposition
Speaker 1: and where it goes is driven by hormones. So if
Speaker 1: you have your fat building up in all the right
Speaker 1: places according to your sex you were, you were basically
Speaker 1: broadcasting that you are quite fertile and feaking and ready
Speaker 1: to raise ten kids and start a farm. Let's do
Speaker 1: this is what your hips are shouting. Well, what you're doing.
Speaker 1: What you want is to seek someone out that you
Speaker 1: can raise, uh, have a lot of and raise future
Speaker 1: little employees. Basically, yeah, exactly Uh. And back to the
Speaker 1: symmetry thing. Um. They have found also in studies that
Speaker 1: the more symmetrical you are, um, you're also gonna have
Speaker 1: more sex and more sexual partners in your life, especially
Speaker 1: if you're a man, or particularly if you're a man. Yeah. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: So it does seem to come down the answer to
Speaker 1: this question why senior adult couples uh can sometimes start
Speaker 1: to look like one another is that they are probably
Speaker 1: genetically similar to begin with. Yeah, and then they go
Speaker 1: through life experiences together that shaped them together. So you
Speaker 1: put all that together, you've got an older, senior adult
Speaker 1: couple who looks like brother and sister and they still
Speaker 1: kiss in front of people. Yeah, you put that all together.
Speaker 1: Throw them both in lavender track suits, which always helps.
Speaker 1: There is that thing too, where couples inadvertently I guess
Speaker 1: start to dress or maybe very purposefully start to dress
Speaker 1: a like. I got no problems with that, baby, uh.
Speaker 1: And then dog look alikes we should finish with, because
Speaker 1: everyone loves those great listicles photos of people that look
Speaker 1: like their dogs, and that is a thing that can happen. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they did a study in two thousand four. I
Speaker 1: don't know how this got funded, um, but it apparently
Speaker 1: indicated that people who shop for pure bred dogs uh
Speaker 1: tend to look for dogs that look like them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want I want to see my face looking back
Speaker 1: at me in my dog's face. Yeah, I've seen it.
Speaker 1: But they say that it's pure bread. Is only people
Speaker 1: who like rescue, you know, MutS from shelters or they're
Speaker 1: like whatever, I just like, how your your personality? I
Speaker 1: guess that's right. So, um, there you go, there you
Speaker 1: have it. I guess that means chuck. Then short stuff
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