this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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[–] RegularJoe@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I don't have a great answer other than of the 32 studied, these were their stratification:

Related to population stratification, among the 16 look-alike pairs, 13 were of European ancestry, 1 Hispanic, 1 East Asian, and 1 Central-South Asian.

Source: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(22)01075-0

But whether people who look close enough to perform as another, such as the "Chinese Obama" (Xiao Jiguo) I can't say.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/chinese-president-barack-obama-lookalike-xiao-jiguo-charges-1-500-n444251

Then there's Indonesia's former president, Joko Widodo:

https://nextshark.com/people-love-indonesias-president-looks-like-barack-obama

It would be interesting to get the researchers to analyze their DNA.

[–] temporal_spider@masto.ai 2 points 8 hours ago

@RegularJoe thank you! This is quite interesting. I'd forgotten about the celebrity look-alikes you mentioned. I'm not surprised the studies aren't there.