Science Says Where You Live Determines Your Romantic Type More Than You Think

I've never really believed in the concept of "The One."

No, I think there are multiple "ones" out there, and you can make it work with most of them.

I obviously always knew I was right (because I rock), but science has finally decided to back up my belief.

A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology looks into what goes into making a person's romantic type, and a lot of it has to do with where you grew up.

Yup, it's all about location.

Researchers at the University of California looked into three individual studies to examine the dating patterns of over 1,000 heterosexual couples in order to gain a better insight on how people determine their “types.”

First and foremost, we do have types. The study found that people we date tend to share lots of similarities in both looks and personality. But, how do we determine what our type is?

In terms of looks, their research finds that hot people usually seduce other hot people. In other words, we usually go for people who we see as our equals in terms of attractiveness.

We usually go for people who we see as our equals in terms of attractiveness.

However, in terms of what your exes have in common outside their attractiveness, researchers found that it has less to do with the type of person you're into physically and more to do with where you live. This is especially true for factors such as education and religion.

For example, you might date highly educated guys who don't believe in God, but that could only be because those were the only people you were exposed to growing up.

The study's primary author, Paul Eastwick, associate professor of psychology, explained his findings,

Do people have a type? Yes. But sometimes it reflects your personal desirability and sometimes it reflects where you live.

Of course, intelligence and educational level do intrinsically play a role in whether or not we're attracted to someone, no matter the location, but Eastwick also mentioned that they often correlate directly to where the people went to school or their career.

In one of the three individual studies examined, researchers looked at the exes of hundreds of young adults from different schools across the U.S..

They found that people's exes tended to be similar when it came to their education, religiosity and intelligence, but as Eastwick explained, these similarities were a direct result where these people went to school.

Simply put, people were dating those types of people because that's all they were exposed to.

I mean, it makes sense, right? I went to a Jesuit university for college. The fact that every boy I dated in college was a college-educated boy from a Catholic family wasn't really a shocker. That was literally the only type of boy I was surrounded by.

So next time your friends make fun of you for having such a type, tell them to buzz off. It's not your fault, it's just where you live!

Citations: People's romantic choices share characteristics, but for different reasons (EurekAlert!)