Research published in the June issue of
the journal Psychological Science had good news for those in the romance starved friend zone. Friends who become lovers think of each other as hotter than do strangers. When a couple started as friends first , the researchers found a marked similarity in a partner's opinion of the other. Strangers saw attractiveness differently. They were shown 167 pictures of couples and usually noted one partner was more attractive (or hotter) than the other.
This happened in a significant number of cases. The study showed the prior friendship acted as a magnifying glass on each other's best traits. Each saw the best in other. The 167 couples in the sample had experienced a friendship before romance which lasted an average of four months.
As I read this study thoughts of one famous couple came to mind - Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Whether I think of Kanye's personality as abrasive doesn't matter. He is an average looking guy when one factors out his fame, power, and occasional verbal faux pas. Kim is hot. Kanye is not.
The couple's history helps illustrate the findings of the study. Their friendship began nine years before their romance. Both had several other relationships while they were friends. When Kim met Kanye, Damon Thomas was her husband. Later they divorced and Kim next married Kris Humphries. The world got an inside look at that marriage on the Kardashian's reality show. Kanye West was engaged to one fashion designer and then another during this time, Alexis Phifer and Amber Rose. Turns out he was a man in the friend zone. The UK's Daily Mail quoted Kanye as saying that his heart began going pitter-patter for Kim in 2006. The pair became romantic in 2012.
The researchers used the principle of Assortive Dating as a launch pad in their study. Simply stated, Assortive Dating theorizes that people of like attractiveness get together. Hot gets hot. Not hot gets not hot. This pans out as true for romantic couples who did not begin as friends.
To help expose the differences experienced by 'friends first' couples, researchers brought in what they call a moderator, the strangers. If I had been one of the strangers, I would have said Kanye is a 6 and Kim is a 10. According to the study's measurements, Kanye and Kim would say each other is a 10.
Turns our that friend zone may not be a romantic dead zone. This new research says that a friendship turned romantic makes a person's hotness factor less important.