Phenotypic assortment versus social homogamy for personality, education, attitudes, and language use

Abstract

As part of a follow-up study of offspring who participated in the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition (HFSC) from 1972 to 1976, 40 pairs of now-adult siblings of Caucasian ancestry, including 23 pairs where one sibling spouse was also tested and 17 pairs where both sibling spouses were tested, and 36 pairs of siblings of Japanese ancestry, including 26 pairs where one sibling spouse was also tested and 10 pairs where both sibling spouses were tested, were administered the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and the Comrey-Newmeyer Radicalness-Consevatism Scale and reported on their years of education and pidgin and standard English use. Model-fitting analyses using delta paths suggested no significant degree of assortative mating for EPQ Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Psychoticism. Assortment for the EPQ Lie Scale, Radicalness-Consevatism, education, and language use was found to be mostly due to active phenotypic assortment, with significant effects of social homogamy found for Radicalness-Conservatism and pidgin use. These latter findings contrast with the stronger effects of social homogamy on assortative mating found for Japanese and Chinese ancestry sibling-spouse pairs in the HFSC parent generation.