Assortative Mating and Personality in Human Couples: A Study Using Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory

Abstract

The trend toward assortative mating is the rule in Western societies for a large series of factors. The case for personality variables is however not clear, since weak and even negative relationships have been found in correlation analyses between spouses. The present study compared the profiles of members from 145 stable couples living together for more than 5 years, and representative of the Belgian population. Personality measurements were performed using Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), in order to: 1) determine whether the subject's TCI predicts the partner's profile; 2) determine whether modeling has an important influence between the partners; 3) describe the behavior of personalities with extreme traits; 4) measure whether personalities with extreme traits would favor complementarity over homogamy. In all dimensions but Harm Avoidance and its sub-dimensions, positive associations were found between the partners, indicating a trend toward assortative mating. These differences were significant for Novelty Seeking, Reward Dependence, Persistence and Cooperativeness. Trends were observed in Self-Directedness and Self-Transcendence. Subjects with extreme personality traits were not shown to favor complementarity over assortative mating. Homogamy was thus confirmed here for a series of personality traits, independently of the TCI Temperament or Character classification and on the subjects position in the distribution.

Multidimensional perfectionism and assortative mating: A perfect date?

“…The question of perfectionists' attractiveness as a potential date (and mate) is important for the social disconnection model of perfectionism (Hewitt, Flett, Sherry, & Caelian, 2006;Sherry, Mackinnon, & Gautreau, in press). Moreover, the related question of whether perfectionists are more attractive to other perfectionists than nonperfectionists is important for theories about the heritability of perfectionism (Flett, Hewitt, Oliver, &Macdonald, 2002;Tozzi et al, 2004) as well as general theories of assortative mating PERFECTIONISM AND ASSORTATIVE MATING 3 related to personality traits (e.g., Le Bon et al, 2013;Rammstedt & Schupp, 2008). The present research represents the first study investigating these questions.…”

“…Many studies show that partners in long-term relationships bear a higher resemblance to each other than randomly selected couples with respect to numerous characteristics such as personality traits (e.g., Le Bon et al, 2013;Rammstedt & Schupp, 2008), personal attitudes and values (e.g., Feng & Baker, 1994;Luo & Klohnen, 2005), and cognitive abilities (e.g., MascieTaylor & Vandenberg, 1988;Watson et al, 2004). This phenomenon is ascribed to the systematic selection of mating partners based on the similarity to oneself, and widely referred to as "assortative mating" (Buss, 1985;Mascie-Taylor, 1988).…”

Stars that crash.

“…Assortativeness is also showing a preference for membership in a group whose members share a large number of characteristics. Bon et al (2013) showed that their participants, including those who had extreme personality traits (scored very high on Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI)), preferred positive assortative mating (similarities) over complementarity (preferring to compensate for variations). Extending this concept of assortative mating to social relationships, we assume that stars also engage in positive assortative social relationships.…”