Spouse similarity for personality traits and marriage duration

Abstract

Among all psychological features used for spouse similarity assessment a special attention is paid to personality traits. These are personality traits that show the greatest variety of spouse similarity assessment (from low negative correlations to moderate positive ones) as well as no similarity. The study of Russian sample (855 couples whose marriage duration varied from a few months to 50 years) shows spouse similarity for several personality traits of different level of integrity (biological features of personality, internality level, machiavellianism, measures of conscious self-regulation of behavior, sensation seeking). Spouse similarity for the measured personality traits is lower than 0,26; it reaches the highest values for machiavellianism, sensation seeking and ability to think over one’s own actions for better goal achievement and the lowest values – for neuroticism (0,07). Spouse similarity analyses in sub-samples of couples with different marriage duration shows that assortative mating may be considered as a characteristics dependent on marriage duration.