Author: Paul Ratner / Source: Big Think
- Scientists looked at pairs of people who looked like each other but were not twins.
- The results showed that genetics plays a stronger role in personality formation than how alike people were treated by others.
- Behaving similarly is a stronger social glue than physical resemblance.
People have many misconceptions and strange theories about twins and people who look alike. One great one courtesy of the Internet claimed that Nic Cage is actually a vampire on account of a Civil-War-era photo of a man looking remarkably like Cage. Another, more down-to-earth conjecture about twins that’s been discussed considerably by researchers has been the idea that the personalities of identical twins would be similar because they get treated the same way by others on account of looking alike. It turns out that’s also a myth, finds a new study.
In an ongoing project to identify the factors that affect personality, researchers looked at just how much effect social interaction with others can have on people who look the same. The team, led by Nancy L. Segal, professor of psychology and director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton, started off by connecting with the Canadian photographer François Brunelle, who was famous for taking pictures of people who resembled each other over many years.
credit: François Brunelle
By analyzing 45 pairs who looked like each other, Professor Segal wanted to understand if their personalities were similar as if they were identical twins. Otherwise, she reasoned, if they didn’t show many traits in common, it would mean that genetic factors contribute more strongly to personality formation.
The study participants (called U-LAs…
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