The evolutionary law of human attraction or how to find your perfect mate

Many people are familiar with Plato’s story of soulmates. Zeus split humans apart and from then on the two parts had to find each other. But how do you find your soulmate?

Helen Fisher has studied online dating and has found out that certain personality types prefer to pair up. Even though her personality types don’t correspond perfectly with either Myers-Briggs or Big 5, there is considerable overlap. She has found out that “explorers” (SP) tend to choose each other and the same is true for “builders” (SJ). However, “directors” and “negotiators” tend to pair up with members from the other group. The four groups, therefore, would be:

In Myers-Briggs hunter and gatherers would be NT and NF types, pastoralists SP types and farmers SJ types. Farmer types look for helpmates, pastoralist types for playmates and hunter-gatherer types for soulmates.

Given that these types tend to choose partners among themselves, we can expect that these types have more or less typical personality profiles and ideas of what they look for in a partner. I have discussed these traits already elsewhere.

If people keep choosing specific types consistently you can expect sexual selection to take place. In fact, assortative mating is commonly found in humans.  Jim Black has found out that the four types correspond to the four different groups. Here is what they look like:

Hunter-gatherers: rectangular face shape for hunters, heart-shaped face for gatherers (male and female patterns are often reversed in modern hunter-gatherer personalities, i.e. females can have rectangular facial shape and males the heart-shaped form. They, therefore, tend to pair in all possible varieties: hunter-gatherer, hunter-hunter and gatherer-gatherer.

San hunter (rectangular face) and gatherer (heart-shaped face) 

Richard Dawkins (hunter) and Lala Ward (gatherer) paring, two soulmates

Pastoralists have oval-shaped faces.

Datoga and Maasai pastoralists: oval faces.

Paul and Linda McCartney: oval faces, artistic personality types (ISFPs), two playmates, a turbulent but successful marriage.

Farmer types tend to be more serious and hard-working. They have typically square or round faces:

African farmers with square/round faces

Geroge W. and Laura Bush, square/round farmer faces

Of course, there can also be successful mixed marriages, but they might be a bit harder as this couple testifies:

Pattie Boyd rock music's most famous muse, who was the inspiration for many famous songs like "Something" by the Beatles and "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight" by Eric Clapton, left George Harrison for Eric Clapton.

Pattie and Gorge - gatherer soulmates

Pattie and Eric - gatherer/pastoralist playmates

Pattie later regretted getting married to Eric and famously said that she and George had been "soulmates",  whereas she and Eric had only been "playmates".

To sum up the evolutionary law of attraction: hunter-gatherer, pastoralist and farmer personalities tend to mate within their respective group (sexual selection). Facial features and personality are two of the main attractors. Other attractors are material status and reliability for farmers, "coolness and fun" for pastoralists and intelligence and kindness for hunter-gatherers. 

Last but not least, I suppose many people don't fall clearly into one of those groups and have mixed features.

Credit for discovering the relationship between facial features and personality type goes to Jim Black