Scientists have proved that love at first sight is real

Love at first sight is a saccharine cliche. Unfortunately for cynics,  it stands up to scientific analysis: new research by researchers at the University of Basel finds that it only takes milliseconds to work out whether you do or do not fancy someone.

Subjects took an “implicit association test”, which asks people to associate words with familiar and foreign objects in order to measure how they subconsciously connect ideas. For example, football fans were presented with positive and negative words, and names of players on their team and players on other teams.

Unsurprisingly, they attached positive words to their own players more frequently than they attached them to members of other teams; the brain is attracted to familiarity rather than difference. Researchers measured brainwaves to show that it typically takes us less than a second to make these decisions.

Begrudge it, but those soppy moppets twittering about how they “just knew” are probably, technically, right.