Political views a top priority in choosing life partners, says study

Political views a top priority in choosing life partners, says study

By LAUREN ACURANTES

In this case, opposites do not attract.

A recent study done by researchers in the United States suggests that similar political and social views take a strong precedence over a person’s looks, personality and even religious views, when choosing a life partner.

This intriguing result was reached after a group of researchers from Rice University studied the “physical, personality and behavioral traits of more than 5,000 married couple in the United States.”

Participants were given a set of traits that ranged from physical attributes to beliefs and ideologies, and were then asked to rate the said traits from zero to one, depending on how strong they felt on the match with their spouse – one, of course, pertaining to a perfect match.

The only attribute that ranked slightly higher than having similar views was “the frequency of church attendance.”

Clearly, spouses are no longer heavily concerned about the way they look and act around their chosen partner, but is it also possible that these partners started out having varying political views and just eventually adopted the views of the more dominant partner? After all, the survey was conducted on people who were already married.

The study does not answer this question.

Still, researchers believe this might help pave the way for singles to quickly weed out the losers from the winners, romantically speaking.

As study author, associate professor of political science, John Alford puts it, “…if you're looking for a long-term romantic relationship, skip 'What's your sign?' and go straight to 'Obama or Palin?' And if you get the wrong answer, just walk away.”

Simple, really.

Source: Yahoo! Health