你有沒有發現:你的前任都有共同點?
Do you have a definite "type" when selecting romantic partners? Like, maybe you have a thing for tattoos. Or maybe you're into intellectual people who like to read. Or, perhaps, you like your partners to have a sense of adventure. Whatever it is, I think that many people would agree that their exes all have certain things in common (in my case, it's emotional unsteady and terrible communication skills).
找對象時，你是不是隻找特定一款？比如說，你特別喜歡有紋身的人。或者你喜歡有知識、愛讀書的人。又或者你喜歡有冒險精神的人。不管是哪種情況，我想很多人都會同意這一點：自己的前任有某些共同點（就我而言，我的前任在感情上漂浮不定，而且不會溝通。）Researchers set out to determine how people choose partners, and whether there were any demonstrable patterns (aside from the fact that they were all chosen by the same person, of course). And what they found was that people do, in fact, have a type. When looking at people's exes, they found that they all shared certain characteristics in common (turns out that emotional steady and communication skills were not characteristics on the researchers' lists, alas).
研究員們開始研究人們是如何選擇另一半的，研究是否有任何可以論證的模式存在（當然，除了他們都被同一個人選中這一事實之外）。他們發現，人們真的是按照特定類型選對象的。當研究人們的前任時，研究員們發現：他們都有特定的共同特徵（原來情感穩定狀況和溝通技巧根本就不在研究員們的特徵清單上，哎）。
The study, out of the University of California, was recently published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It looked at three different studies and compiled the results into a cohesive resource. In total, the characteristics of people in more than 1,000 past and present heterosexual relationships were examined through personal interviews and social media. What the researchers found was that people do have a type, but that "sometimes it reflects your personal desirability and sometimes it reflects where you live," according to Paul Eastwick, associate professor of psychology and the study's primary author.
加州大學的這項研究最近在《人格與社會心理》雜誌上發表。該項研究查看了三項截然不同的研究，並將結果編撰在一起。總的來說，研究員們通過個人訪談和社交媒體交談調查了1000多段異性戀情（有過去時，有正在進行時）中人們的性格。研究員們發現，人們真的是按照特定一款選對象的，但"有時候這反映了你個人的慾望，有時卻反映了你生活的地方，"心理學副教授兼本研究的主要作者保羅·伊斯特維克說道。
It turns out that where we live and our demographic groups have a great impact on who we date, not necessarily because they shape our preferences, but because they influence who we are exposed to. For example, people of a certain educational level tend to date people of a similar educational level, but that is because they may go to school together or work together and, therefore, meet each other. The same is true of people who are religious; they're likely to meet other religious people because of their lifestyle. In these cases, choice is more about our environment than our preferences.
事實表明，我們的居住地和周圍人羣都會影響我們選擇約會對象，不一定是因爲這些因素塑造了我們的喜好，而且還因爲它們影響了我們接觸的人。比如，特定教育水平的人往往會和相似教育水平的人約會，但這也許是因爲他們一起上學或一起工作，所以能常常見面。有宗教信仰的人也是如此；他們可能會因爲生活方式遇到有着其它宗教信仰的人。在這些情況下，選擇權在更大程度上取決於生活環境，而非喜好。
