Mate Selection, Marital Adjustment, and Symbolic Environment

Abstract

We will here examine a few hypotheses or theories which have to do with mate-selection. With the assistance of parts of these we will, in addition, treat some aspects of marital adjustment. Among the old ways of thinking about mate-selection, we find the conceptions homogamy and heterogamy. The hypothesis of homogamy commonly says that the choice of a spouse will be (unconsciously or consciously) done so that the spouses are alike as much as possible. The assumption that one tends (unconsciously or consciously) to choose a spouse who is as different from oneself as possible is consequently called the hypothesis of heterogamy. Thus generally drawn up, the two hypotheses contradict each other. Much research has been undertaken to test the two hypotheses. There is no lack of support for the former one. It has been found that according to many social characteristics, e.g. religious confession, social class, education, and intelligence, the spouses tend to be equal. Moreover, with regard to what we prefer to call social psychological characteristics, interests, attitudes etc., the hypothesis of homogamy seems to be adequate. The hypothesis of heterogamy, on the other hand, has been confirmed at the investigation of the spouses' psychological characteristics, i.e. personality traits and some secondary needs. After some reformulations and specifications, the two hypotheses can be said to complement each other. Both are merely descriptive hypotheses. Since such hypotheses seldom are especially productive, it has been necessary to go further into them and transform them into explanatory hypotheses. A first step in that direction is the principle of propinquity in geographical and social space. It says that we tend to marry persons in spatial nearness to ourselves 1), i.e. persons who live in our neighbourhood, who are our work comrades, who were our schoolfellows etc. In our western culture we almost never marry a person that we have never met, and the probability of meeting persons who are neighbours, schoolfellows, work comrades, etc., is much greater than the prob-