‘Doppelbangers’ debunked: Famous couples who look alike are no more likely to stay together than couples with different faces, study shows

From Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons to Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, famous couples often look strangely similar.

In fact, the phenomenon has coined the term “doppelbanger”: two people with similar facial features who are deeply involved.

This has led to speculation that looking the same is somehow conducive to a better or longer lasting relationship.

But researchers in Germany, who used artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze photos of celebrities, have found there is no evidence to support this.

Celebrity couples who look alike are no more likely to stay together than couples with different faces, such as David and Victoria Beckham, and Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, they say.

The new study was led by Veronika Shavlokhova at the University Hospital Maxillofacial Surgery Ruppin-Brandenburg in Germany.

The researchers wanted to look at an ‘understudied’ facet of romantic relationships: the link between facial similarity and the duration of a partnership.

“The long-standing fascination with why certain individuals form and maintain romantic partnerships extends from personal curiosity to academic research,” Shavlokhova and colleagues say in the journal Symmetry.

‘One popular theory is that physical resemblance, especially in facial features, plays a crucial role in romantic relationships.

‘Prevailing research on romantic relationships often emphasizes facial symmetry as a factor in mate choice and marital satisfaction.’

For the study, they used CELEB-A, a dataset of more than 200,000 celebrity photos from the Multimedia Lab at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Their final sample consisted of 1,822 heterosexual celebrities, with an average time spent as a couple – married or unmarried – of about nine years.

AI was used to thoroughly analyze each celebrity’s facial features, including the position of the nose, the width of the mouth and the distance between the eyes.

SIMILAR: Many famous couples, including actress Rooney Mara and actor Joaquin Phoenix (pictured), look alike

SIMILAR: Husband and wife Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes are known for their incredible facial similarities, especially around the eyes

SIMILAR: Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons – known for their similar skin tones and even heights – pictured here in LA last year

But ultimately, the study found no significant correlation between facial similarity and partnership duration, nor between facial differences and partnership duration.

The relationship between facial features and the length of partnerships may be ‘complex’ and other nuanced factors may play a ‘more critical role’, the experts say.

Interestingly, the analysis also found no difference in facial similarity between married and unmarried couples.

“Overall, these findings suggest that differences in faces, whether assessed for the entire face or for individual historical regions, are not a robust predictor of partnership duration,” the experts say.

‘These findings highlight the complexity of predicting relationship outcomes based solely on facial characteristics and suggest that other nuanced factors may play a more crucial role in determining relationship dynamics.’

Of course, looking like your partner is not a phenomenon reserved exclusively for the rich and famous.

A popular Instagram page called @siblingsordating is dedicated to photos of regular couples who look uncannily similar, mixed with photos of siblings.

DIFFERENT: English actress Emily Blunt and her husband John Krasinski, star of The US Office

DIFFERENT: British stars Sam Taylor-Johnson and Aaron Taylor-Johnson attended the Charles Finch and Chanel 2024 Pre-Bafta Party at Hertford Street Club, London last month

DIFFERENT: In terms of physical characteristics, David and Victoria Beckham are about as similar as their respective industries: football and music

But this study looked specifically at celebrities, which the team admits may “limit the generalizability of the results to broader populations.”

Despite the results, there is compelling evidence that we are attracted to people who are similar to us, although non-doppelbanger couples are proof that the opposite is also true.

A study last year found that we are attracted to people with similar facial features because we perceive them as ‘friendly and trustworthy’.

Looking similar can create a sense of ‘relatedness’, which can lead to more pro-social behavior and a greater chance of becoming a couple.

If you’re dating someone who looks JUST like you, you’ll be in good company with celebrities like Kristen Stewart and Courteney Cox

Instead of opposites attracting, studies have long shown that people are more likely to date partners who are similar to themselves.

Celebrities around the world are proving this idea, including blonde Oscar nominee Kristen Stewart and her fiancé Dylan Meyer.

Meanwhile, Friends star Courteney Cox and her partner Snow Patrol guitarist Johnny McDaid are known for their incredibly similar face shape and bone structure and piercing blue eyes.

But the phenomenon is not exclusive to the rich and famous Instagram page called @siblingsordating is dedicated to snapshots of couples who look eerily similar.

We may be naturally attracted to other people who look like us because seeing them creates a sense of familiarity or kinship.

Human rights attorney Alexi Ashe and her comedian husband Seth Meyers attend the 2023 Met Gala in New York City

A 2012 study by the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution in Montpellier, France, found that more than a third of men were most attracted to images of women that had been digitally manipulated to resemble their own features.

There’s also an idea that couples become more and more alike after years together, a theory supported by a 1987 University of Michigan study that found that partners who didn’t look alike at the start of a marriage had some degree of convergence is perceived positively. correlated with couples’ assessment of marital quality.

However, this idea has been debunked by a more recent 2020 Stanford University study published in Scientific Reports.

Researchers have compiled a database of photos of more than 500 couples, taken in the first two years of their marriage and anywhere from 20 to 69 years later.

They asked volunteers to examine a photo of one person and six others, including their partner, and rank them based on similarity, and perform the same task using facial recognition software.

However, they found no evidence that couples changed over time, concluding that the spouses’ faces often looked similar to begin with.