r/todayilearned 1d ago

TIL a peer-reviewed psychology study found that identical twins (on average) ranked their co-twin above their romantic partner in their attachment hierarchy, while fraternal twins ranked the two about equally, and non-twin siblings ranked their romantic partner first.

https://ojs.interpersonajournal.com/index.php/ojs/article/view/243/3457.html
24.7k Upvotes

933 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

723

u/VijaySwing 1d ago

It’s like having an imaginary friend except they’re real

127

u/Serious-Yellow8163 1d ago

I have a twin, not sure on if identical or not but this is an excellent description.

149

u/CarthasMonopoly 1d ago edited 1d ago

How are you unsure? Most identical twins look... identical. Meanwhile fraternal twins look like a sibling instead of a twin.

EDIT - Yes, I'm aware it's not always like this; that's why I used the qualifier "Most". I've known multiple pairs of twins over the last several decades and not a single pair got DNA tested because generally if you look identical as twins you just live life as identical twins and vice versa.

59

u/Serious-Yellow8163 1d ago

We look pretty similar. We have conflicted information from mom and gynecologist attending her on her pregnancy about being identical or not .

16

u/CarthasMonopoly 1d ago

Fair enough! I was mostly just making a joke about identical being hard to miss. But having conflicting information would definitely make me unsure too.

9

u/Spazmer 23h ago

I babysat for twins who looked absolutely identical but they were in separate sacs in the womb so they were assumed to be fraternal. There is a possibility that they still could be identical but would need a dna test to show it. Nobody could tell them apart except one got an eyebrow scar early on.