Women who got along well with their dads as kids are attracted to men who resemble their fathers, where women who had a bad father-daughter relationship do not.
Researchers at the University of Wroclaw and the Institute of Anthropology in Poland asked a trained anthropologist to perform facial measurements on the photographs of 15 random men as well as the photographs of the fathers of 49 Polish women participating in this new study. The anthropologist calculated 15 key proportions based on how various features - such as lips, nose, cheekbones and brows - related to each face's height and width. The researchers also compared the 15 random faces to each of the father's faces to determine how closely they resembled one another.
The women then rated their childhood relationships with their fathers based on how emotionally invested they felt their dads had been in raising them and how much time their fathers had spent with them. The women were split into two groups based on how positively or negatively they rated their relationships. Then the researchers asked the women to rate how attractively they found each of the 15 random male faces.
The women who had reported positive relationships with their fathers were much more likely to be attracted to men resembling their fathers.
On the other hand women with bad relationships did not find men who looked like their fathers appealing.
"Although no one yet knows for sure why females show these preferences, a woman with a great dad may choose a similar looking mate in the hopes that he will also be a good father," research team leader Dr (Ms) Lynda Boothroyd, a professor of psychology at the University of Durham, England, told reporters recently.
Labels: father, husband, relationship, research