24 ways to be compatible with your relationship partners: Sex differences, context effects, and love styles

Abstract

Whether two people can get along is likely an important consideration in mate choice but it is relatively neglected by researchers. We provided an initial exploration of the concept of romantic/sexual compatibility by asking participants (N = 274) how different/similar they want to be from their partners on 153 items that we reduced to 24 factors (e.g., appearance, conformity, leisure) which had good fit and metric invariance and (some) scalar invariance. To understand individual differences in scores on these factors, we considered participant's sex, relationship seriousness (i.e., casual vs. romantic), and love styles. Similarity was considered more important by women and in serious relationships. Participants preferred similarity in specific factors consistent with their love styles, like romanticism if one is high in eros. Results are discussed in relation to evolutionary and sociocultural models of mate choice.