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  Life   More Features  30 Oct 2017  Attraction to partners based on how parents look, says new study

Attraction to partners based on how parents look, says new study

THE ASIAN AGE
Published : Oct 30, 2017, 2:25 pm IST
Updated : Oct 30, 2017, 4:03 pm IST

Study concludes participants are twice as likely to go for someone whose eye colour is that of the parent whose sex they are attracted to.

The study correlated to a theory known as positive sexual imprinting, according to which birds and mammals choose their mates based on attributes exhibited by their parents.
 The study correlated to a theory known as positive sexual imprinting, according to which birds and mammals choose their mates based on attributes exhibited by their parents.

A new study now reveals that we are indeed attracted to people who look like our parents.

The study, conducted by scientists at the Glasgow University on heterosexual men and gay women concluded that they looked for women with the same eye colour as their mothers.

Similarly, they also found that heterosexual women and gay men were attracted to men whose eyes were the same colour as their father.

The study concluded that participants were twice as likely to go for someone whose eye colour was that of the parent whose sex they were attracted to.

The study correlated to a theory known as positive sexual imprinting, according to which birds and mammals choose their mates based on attributes exhibited by their parents and by successfully applying the same concept to humans, as these researchers have done, one could argue that their findings mimic Oedipal ideologies.

The Oedipus Complex, coined by Sigmund Freud in 1910 is a theory in psychoanalysis which refers to a person’s unconscious attraction to their opposite sex-parent.

The theory took its name form Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, where Oedipus, the protagonist, unknowingly married and fathered a child with his own mother.

Tags: love, partner, sex, attraction, parents, sex and relationship