Arousal, personality, and assortative mating in marriage.

Abstract

It is known that there is significant assortative mating for intelligence. However, where personality is concerned, the picture is less clear, and where physiologically referenced individual differences are concerned, there is a negligible body of available research. A compound major individual difference variable having a putative physiological basis--arousal and the stimulation-seeking motive, which has not heretofore been investigated in studies of assortative mating--was the focus of the present study. In addition, three major personality dimensions--extraversion-introversion, neuroticism and psychoticism--were included for study. One hundred and two married couples in the housing complex of a large American midwestern university were tested on the arousal/stimulation-seeking and personality measures. Significant assortative mating (p less than .01) was found only for arousal/stimulation-seeking. The results for the other personality dimensions failed to confirm significant but slight assortative mating for neuroticism and psychoticism previously reported for British couples, but were in accord with the previously reported lack of any assortative mating for extraversion-introversion. The results were discussed in terms of further understanding the basis of assortative mating, with particular attention given to the likely role of biological cycles. Further research was outlined.