Similar traits such as behaviour, political, religious views, attitude and other habits play a greater role in attracting couples to each other, discovered a study, which has busted the claims that opposites attract.

Tanya Horwitz, a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder, US, conducted a study in which her team analysed 130 traits of personalities. The analysis revealed that more than 80 couples have the same habits.

“Our findings demonstrate that birds of a feather are indeed more likely to flock together,” said the author.

Horwitz’s team in the US combined data from nearly 200 previous studies dating back to 1903 to search the fact whether couples who spend their life together were either similar or not in their traits.

The group analysed 133 from 80,000 couples working on a biobank project in Britain.

The study further found that people like to spend time with those who have similar political and religious thoughts, similar levels of education and IQ, and even have same addictions.

However, these personalities didn’t match on each level, as their height, weight, and medical condition may change.

There could be long-term consequences – for example, if short people were more likely to have children with other small individuals, there could be more height issues in the next generation, they said.

Meanwhile, people choosing life partners with similar educational backgrounds could inadvertently widen the socioeconomic divide.

‘These findings suggest that even in situations where we feel like we have a choice about our relationships, there may be mechanisms behind the scenes of which we aren’t fully aware,’ Ms Horwitz said.