Your Best Companion Match Should Look Like You

We've all heard that you date people with similar interests blah, blah, blah...there is a new take on this from the dating website findyourfacemate.com - they take your picture and using facial recognition software (starting to sound like a cool movie) find others who look like you and you get to check them...or yourself? out!  Sounds like a bad idea to me - because I would make one ugly girl...and if a girl did look like me I wouldn't look twice!  No word yet on exactly when the site launches and you can start dating your doppleganger.

If you are intrigued here is the theory on how and why it works.

1. THE EUREKA MOMENT
Founder Christina Bloom got the idea from personal experience; friends would tell her that she and her ex-husband “looked like brother and sister.” “I actually became very fixated on the thing,” she says. “Whenever I talked about it, people said I didn’t know what I was talking about. And that I was crazy. But I would see it so clearly!”

2. CUPID’S ALGORITHM

Findyourfacemate.com is powered by facial-recognition technology developed byFace.com, which zeros in on nine points on each face—the eyes, ears, nose, chin, and the corners and center of the mouth—to find similarities.

3. ANCILLARY FACTORS

Once facial matches have been found, users can select candidates who share their values and personal style, which still matter: An L.L. Bean fan “is not going to be interested in a Versace-type person,” Bloom explains.

4. RESEMBLANCES, NOT MIRROR IMAGES

The site won’t always match you with people who look like your twin. “It’s not [perfect] symmetry as much as it is shape and structure,” says Bloom.

5. WHAT THE SCIENCE SAYS

In a 1989 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, male and female “raters” were asked to judge the faces of 60 couples (some real, some strangers included as a control) on a nine-point scale, where 1 represented no similarity and 9 indicated the hypothetical case of opposite-sex twins. The average score for non-couples was 3.52; among actual couples, the average was 4.05. Concluded the study: “The results suggest that the observation of facial resemblance among couples appears to reflect a real phenomenon.”

6. THE THEORY IN ACTION

Examples of the dating-your-face dynamic can be found in celebrity couples who share a resemblance (a few of which you’ll find in the slideshow above) and stars serially attracted to men and women who could be their siblings (think of Ryan Phillippe and doe-ish Reese Witherspoon … and Abbie Cornish … and Amanda Seyfried).

7. LIKENESS ISN’T EVERYTHING

The site only accounts for initial attraction. “We say that the chemistry and the face matching is the required first step,” Bloom explains. From then on, compatibility is up to you. Even if you’re almost identical, it doesn’t mean you’ll agree on who should take out the garbage.

via The Story Behind Findyourfacemate.com’s Novel Theory of Attraction -- New York Magazine.