What kind of people do you have the best relationship with? Science explains

Anthropologist Sean Prall traveled to northwestern Namibia in southern Africa to study the behavior of the Himba.

groups of semi-nomadic pastoralists.There he discovered that people who are “valued” by society are not only more likely to enter into relationships, but are also more likely to experience success in those relationships. Discuss

While in northern Namibia, he interviewed people aboutdesirability of other community members. With this information, he assessed the "mate's value" every person, i.e. a metric that describes how likely people are to want to be in a relationship with someone. They then analyzed their relationship status.

They found that people with the same"value" are more likely to enter into relationships with each other and also have better relationship outcomes. This study is different from most because it focuses on people's actions rather than their stated preferences, which can be influenced by social pressure, Prall said.