We conducted a comprehensive analysis of assortative mating (i.e., the similarity between wives and husbands on a given characteristic) in a newlywed sample. These newlyweds showed (a) strong similarity in age, religiousness, and political orientation; (b) moderate similarity in education and verbal intelligence; (c) modest similarity in values; and (d) little similarity in matrix reasoning, self-and spouse-rated personality, emotional experience and expression, and attachment. Further analyses established that similarity was not simply due to background variables such as age and education and reflected initial assortment (i.e., similarity at the time of marriage) rather than convergence (i.e., increasing similarity with time). Finally, marital satisfaction primarily was a function of the rater's own traits and showed little relation to spousal similarity.
The authors investigated the stability of personality and trait affect in young adults. In Studies 1 and 2, young adults were retested on a Big Five personality measure and a trait affect inventory over a 2.5-year and a 2-month period, respectively. Results from Study 1 point to positive mean-level changes; participants scored higher on Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness at Time 2. Affectively, participants experienced less negative affect and more positive affect at Time 2. Results from both retests provide clear evidence of differential stability. Affective traits were consistently less stable than the Big Five. Other analyses suggest that life events influence the stability of affective traits more than the Big Five.
Three studies examined global self-esteem in relation to structural models of personality and affectivity. In every study, self-esteem was strongly negatively correlated with Neuroticism/Negative Affectivity and moderately to strongly related to Extraversion/Positive Affectivity. Additional findings, however, revealed that self-esteem is better viewed at the lower order level. For instance, global self-esteem correlated -.79 with the Depression facet of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992) in Study 3. Moreover, confirmatory factor analyses produced very strong correlations between self-esteem and depression in both Study 2 (r = -.82) and Study 3 (r = -.86). Taken together, the data suggest that global self-esteem measures define one end of a bipolar continuum, with trait indicators of depression defining the other.
Big Five and affective traits were measured at three assessments when participants were on average 18, 21, and 24 years old. Rank-order stability analyses revealed that stability correlations tended to be higher across the second compared to the first retest interval; however, affective traits consistently were less stable than the Big Five. Median stability coefficients for the Big Five increased from .62 (Time 1 vs. Time 2) to .70 (Time 2 to Time 3); parallel increases also were observed for measures of negative affectivity (median rs=.49 and .55, respectively) and positive affectivity (median rs=.48 and .57, respectively). Growth curve analyses revealed significant change on each of the Big Five and affective traits, although many of the scales also showed significant variability in individual trajectories. Thus, rank-order stability is increasing for a range of personality traits, although there also is significant variability in change trajectories during young adulthood.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.