Department of Psychology, Northumbria University, Ellison Place, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK.
Arch Sex Behav. 2023 Jan;52(1):291-300. doi: 10.1007/s10508-022-02450-0. Epub 2022 Oct 19.
Studies have indicated that people are attracted to partners who resemble themselves or their parents, in terms of physical traits including eye color. We might anticipate this inclination to be relatively stable, giving rise to a sequential selection of similar partners who then represent an individual's "type". We tested this idea by examining whether people's sequential partners resembled each other at the level of eye color. We gathered details of the eye colors of the partners of participants (N = 579) across their adult romantic history (N = 3250 relationships), in three samples, comprising two samples which made use of self-reports from predominantly UK-based participants, and one which made use of publicly available information about celebrity relationship histories. Recorded partner eye colors comprised black (N = 39 partners), dark brown (N = 884), light brown (N = 393), hazel (N = 224), blue (N = 936), blue green (N = 245), grey (N = 34), and green (N = 229). We calculated the proportion of identical eye colors within each participant's relationship history, and compared that to 100,000 random permutations of our dataset, using t-tests to investigate if the eye color of partners across an individual's relationship history was biased relative to chance (i.e., if there was greater consistency, represented by higher calculated proportions of identical eye colors, in the original dataset than in the permutations). To account for possible eye color reporting errors and ethnic group matching, we ran the analyses restricted to White participants and to high-confidence eye color data; we then ran the analyses again in relation to the complete dataset. We found some limited evidence for some consistency of eye color across people's relationship histories in some of the samples only when using the complete dataset. We discuss the issues of small effect sizes, partner-report bias, and ethnic group matching in investigating partner consistency across time.
研究表明，人们会被在生理特征（包括眼睛颜色）上与自己或父母相似的伴侣所吸引。我们可能会预期这种倾向相对稳定，从而导致对相似伴侣的连续选择，而这些伴侣则代表了一个人的“类型”。我们通过检查人们的连续伴侣在眼睛颜色方面是否彼此相似来检验这个想法。我们在三个样本中收集了参与者（N=579）的伴侣的眼睛颜色详细信息，这些参与者在他们的成年浪漫史（N=3250 段关系）中，这三个样本中包括两个主要利用来自英国参与者的自我报告的样本，以及一个利用名人关系史公开信息的样本。记录的伴侣眼睛颜色包括黑色（N=39 个伴侣）、深棕色（N=884 个）、浅棕色（N=393 个）、淡褐色（N=224 个）、蓝色（N=936 个）、蓝绿色（N=245 个）、灰色（N=34 个）和绿色（N=229 个）。我们计算了每个参与者的关系历史中相同眼睛颜色的比例，并将其与我们数据集的 100,000 次随机排列进行比较，使用 t 检验来研究伴侣的眼睛颜色是否相对于随机（即，如果原始数据集中的相同眼睛颜色的比例更高，则代表更高的一致性）在个体关系史中存在偏见。为了考虑可能的眼睛颜色报告错误和种族匹配，我们仅在白人参与者和高可信度的眼睛颜色数据中进行了分析；然后我们再次针对完整数据集进行了分析。我们发现，在某些样本中，仅当使用完整数据集时，才能在一些人中的关系历史中发现一些眼睛颜色一致性的有限证据。我们讨论了在研究伴侣随时间的一致性时，小效应量、伴侣报告偏差和种族匹配的问题。
