Perfectly Matched Couples Sound the Same, Study Reveals

The easiest way to find out whether you and your current partner are a match made in heaven is to listen to the way he or she speaks – if the speech pattern and the language match yours, you’re set.

A new study authored by James Pennebaker and cited by the Daily Mail reveals that couples that are perfect matches tend to imitate the way one partner speaks because they are deeply psychologically connected.

The process is called “language style matching” (LSM) and is most obvious in happier times, as opposed to a rougher patch of the couple.

“Because style matching is automatic, it serves as an unobtrusive window into people’s close relationships with others,” Molly Ireland, who also contributed to the study, says for the Mail.

The study was started by analyzing the way 2,000 students responded to questions in different styles, which prompted Pennebaker to note that style matching happens almost always in a conversation – and more poignantly in a close relationship.

“The researchers then analyzed the correspondence of famous writers – such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who wrote to each other almost weekly over a seven-year period as their careers were developing,” the Mail says of the following stage of the study.

“By analyzing the LSM in their letters, the researchers were able to chart the two men’s tempestuous relationship – from their early days of joint admiration to their final days of mutual contempt,” says the same publication.

As such, changes in the relationship, be they for better or for worse, are almost always mapped out in the way couples speak, researchers have concluded.

This finding could be of vital importance in terms of determining whether a relationship is doomed or, on the contrary, destined to last a lifetime.

“The researchers are now investigating whether LSM during everyday conversation can be used to predict the beginning and the end of romantic relationships,” says the Mail.

“Language style matching has the potential to quickly and easily reveal whether any given pair – whether business rivals or romantic partners – are on the same page psychologically, and what this means for their future together,” the British publication further writes.