Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Genes and Friend selection.



We’ve always felt a special connection with our friends, but could that connection be due to more than just common interests and shared experiences? Well studies conducted at Stanford, Duke, and the University of Wisconsin, suggest that we might share more genetic similarities with our friends than the average person. The long-term study from which this claim arose, was conducted by running genetic comparisons between 5,000 pairs of adolescent friends tracked from the age of seven up until the 12th grade.                                                                                                                                                                                                  Image result for friends and Genetics

Overall, the data showed significantly higher genetic similarities between friends than between two random individuals. Additionally, around 2/3 of the friend pairs studied, exhibited about the same amount of genetic similarities as married couples, which have already been proven to share a fair amount of genetic parallels due to trends of human attraction. This study and others like it, have further increased our understanding of the implications genetics has on our social interactions and constructs. Thus, we begin to realize that those individuals and social setting we find ourselves surrounded by, are often unconsciously driven by attraction to similar genes.

For the original TIME magazine article use this link: http://time.com/5095903/genetic-similarities-friends-study/
For More information on how genetics can play a role in spouse selection check out this link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170406143920.htm

2 comments:

  1. This is a really interesting subject. It is amazing that each individual is extremely different but we are drawn to those who have large genetic similarity. I definitely want to research this subject more and figure out what genes are similar between friends/ married couples.

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  2. It is really cool to think that we have an attraction to people with similar genes. It was interesting to learn that we have similar genes to both our friends we choose and our spouses.

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