Relationship Satisfaction and Similarity of Personality Traits, Personal Values, and Attitudes

Abstract

Spousal similarity and its consequences are widely studied, but methodologically challenging topics. We employed Response Surface Analysis to examine similarity along political attitudes, personal values, and personality traits. Opposite-sex couples (624 individuals) expecting a child were recruited. Spouses were highly similar regarding their political attitudes and moderately similar regarding trait Openness and the personal values Universalism and Tradition. Similarity for other traits and values was weak (e.g. Conscientiousness, Power values) or non-existent (e.g. Neuroticism, Benevolence values). Similarity in conservative vs. liberal attitudes was non-linear: a conservative-conservative union was most common. Women’s relationship satisfaction was related to similarity in left-right and liberal-conservative political attitudes, and both partners’ satisfaction was related to similarity in Self-Direction values. Similarity in personality traits was unrelated to relationship satisfaction.

When and why is “extraversion” associated with social popularity?

“…This could be also expected to lead to higher relationship satisfaction (Neyer & Asendorpf, 2001) after a successful pair selection, assuming that popular people are able to utilize these opportunities. Such pattern, however, is not apparent in romantic relationships, as individual or dyadic extraversion is not associated with self or partner relationship satisfaction (Leikas, Ilmarinen, Verkasalo, Vartiainen, & Lönnqvist, 2018;Weidmann, Schönbrodt, Ledermann, & Grob, 2017). Therefore, if extraverts also have more opportunities in selecting romantic partners, they would not be utilizing this benefit.…”

Seeing me, seeing you: Testing competing accounts of assumed similarity in personality judgments.

“…In principle, one could argue that higher levels of assumed similarity among close others is attributable to higher levels of actual similarity, given that people might form closer relationships with others who are similar to themselves (Murray, Holmes, Bellavia, Griffin, & Dolderman, 2002;Paunonen & Hong, 2013). However, evidence on whether individuals are more likely to have close relationships with others who have similar personality characteristics is actually mixed (e.g., Beer et al, 2013;Gonzaga, Campos, & Bradbury, 2007;Leikas, Ilmarinen, Verkasalo, Vartiainen, & Lönnqvist, 2018;Luo & Klohnen, 2005;Mollgaard et al, 2016;Rushton & Bons, 2005;Watson et al, 2004Watson et al, , 2000Youyou, Stillwell, Schwartz, & Kosinski, 2017). More importantly, assumed similarity correlations are typically larger than actual similarity correlations on corresponding traits (e.g., T. R. Cohen, Panter, Turan, Morse, & Kim, 2013;Paunonen & Hong, 2013;Watson et al, 2000), and accounting for actual similarity in assumed similarity correlations has been found to still reveal meaningful levels of assumed similarity among well-acquainted others (e.g., Lee et al, 2009;Liu, Ludeke, & Zettler, in press).…”

A theoretical model for understanding relationship functioning in intercultural romantic couples

“…A number of different measures of partner similarity exist in terms of personality traits, attitudes, and behaviors and are generally associated with positive outcomes (often referred to as the similarity effect ; Leikas, Ilmarinen, Verkasalo, Vartiainen, & Lonnqvist, 2018). Yet, mixed findings have arisen from the different psychometric approaches that have been adopted to study dyadic similarity (Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006; Rogers, Wood, & Furr, 2018).…”