What Makes a Partner Ideal, and for Whom? Compatibility Tests, Filter Tests, and the Mating Stability Matrix.

Lorenza Lucchi Basili,Pier Luigi Sacco

doi:10.3390/bs10020048

Abstract

We introduce a typological characterization of possible human heterosexual couples in terms of the concordance-opposition of the orientations of their active and receptive areas as defined by the tie-up theory. We show that human mating incentives, as characterized by widely adopted approaches, such as Becker’s marriage market approach, only capture very specific instances of actual couples thus characterized. Our approach allows us to instead explore how super-cooperation among partners vs. convenience vs. constriction may be regarded as alternatives modes of couple formation and cohesion, leading to very different types of couples with different implications in terms of stability and resilience. Our results may have interesting implications for future experimental research and for individual and family counseling.

Highlights

The human romantic imaginary places a big emphasis on the fact that mating is guided by the search for an ‘ideal’ partner, that is, somebody who matches the expectations and desires of those who search and provides a perfect complementary fit, to arrive at a full harmonization as to intrinsic standards, such as personality traits and attachment styles, as well as to extrinsic ones, such as physical appearance and economic and social status [1]
The analysis of the clash between the success of the compatibility tests and the failure of filter tests in the mating process, and especially of the consequences of such clash, is the topic of some literary masterpieces, such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where we find an iconic representation of the dramatic friction between the perfect poetical affinity of the two young lovers and the fierce opposition of a social context shaped by tribal hatred
We present a complete characterization in the matrix (MSM) form of the typology of possible couples that may be generated within the tie-up theory framework once we consider the articulation of all the possible configurations of cooperation/defection between partners and between the conscious and sub-conscious dimensions of each partner

Summary

Introduction

The human romantic imaginary places a big emphasis on the fact that mating is guided by the search for an ‘ideal’ partner, that is, somebody who matches the expectations and desires of those who search and provides a perfect complementary fit, to arrive at a full harmonization as to intrinsic standards, such as personality traits and attachment styles, as well as to extrinsic ones, such as physical appearance and economic and social status [1]. The literature shows quite clearly that there is a marked sexual dimorphism in the characteristics that male vs female subjects respectively tend to highlight as especially relevant in the choice of the partner: Women’s reproductive capacity (youth, physical aspect) for men, and men’s acquisitive capacity (wealth, socio-economic status) for women [3]. The limitation of this kind of analyses is, that they explore human mating preferences by directly interrogating subjects about the desirability of abstract partner characteristics, rather than of specific, individual potential partners placed in a specific real context. The choice of the partner is, guided by sub-conscious motivations whose effect is not appreciated in an abstract experimental

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Conclusion