How to be lucky in love

People who are successful in love pick partners who think like they do, new scientific research has revealed.

And those who are unlucky are less picky about their partners, choosing people with whom they do not share a psychological make-up.

The research could go some way to explaining why David and Victoria Beckham, Tony and Cherie Blair and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward - one of Hollywood's longest-running unions - have enduring marriages.

It could also explain the long suffering of Victor Meldrew and screen wife Margaret, and the real-life breakups of Paul and Sheryl Gascoigne, Jennifer Lopez and Chris Judd and Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit.

The findings, by Hertfordshire University psychologist Dr Richard Wiseman, came from research into the nature of luck. After dividing people into two categories - lucky and unlucky - they found that people who regard themselves as lucky instinctively chose partners like themselves when given a blinddate questionnaire.

The questions tried to assess how open people were to new experiences, how much they believed in "luck" and how much they dwelled on past events. The quiz was designed to find how volunteers actually thought, not simply whether they were optimistic or pessimistic, extrovert or introvert, hardworking or not.

Once they had finished the questions they were shown the results of a fictitious blind date - and asked to pick their ideal partner. "The lucky people are heavily biased towards individuals who are like them," said Dr Wiseman.

"They are instinctively very good at selecting those with whom they share psychological similarities. Unlucky people don't do that. They are equally divided between people who are like them and people who are not.

"In many cases they're not using the scores to make a sensible choice. A lot of research shows that psychological similarities make for good relationships."

Dr Wiseman found that the "lucky" people tended to have far more successful relationships than those who did not believe they were lucky. "These are general traits," he said. "They involve intuition and being open to new experiences.

"What's interesting is that when you ask them who they would like to date, one group goes straight for someone with traits that match, and the other doesn't."