Evolutionary Psychology of Personality Mate Preferences

Personality characteristics figure prominently in unstmctured nominations of what people want in a mate (Langhome & Secord, 1955). Both women and men say they want a mate who is kind, understanding , dependable, sociable, stable, and intelligent. Personality traits such as these have made their way onto more stmctured instmments designed to assess mate preferences but not in a systematic fashion. A few personality descriptors have been sprinkled throughout mate preference instm-ments designed to assess an array of qualities, such as physical appearance, economic resources, and education level. No prior studies have undertaken a systematic evaluation of what men and women desire in a broad array of personality characteristics, such as that represented by the five-Two theoretical orientations provide some preliminary hypotheses about the role of personality in mate selection and marital happiness— one stemming from conceptions of assortative mating and one stemming from evolutionary psychology. Perhaps the most well-documented theory of human mating is that likes attract likes—^that men and women become coupled with those who are similar to themselves (Buss, 1985; Thiessen & Gregg, 1980). This notion has received voluminous support in dozens of studies that show that people positively assort on age, ethnicity, religious background , height, weight, socioeconomic status, values, political orientation , and even nose breadth and earlobe length. When it comes to personality characteristics, however, there is little evidence for positive assortment, at least for the two traits that have been examined most commonly—^Extraversion and Neuroticism (Eysenck, 1981). Lacking, however, is a broader-gauged evaluation of assortative mating for personality that encompasses not just these two factors, but an array of personality factors, such as that captured by the five-factor model. A key question with any finding of assortative mating is this: What causal processes lead to assortment? Many causal processes have been proposed as candidates. One is propinquity, the notion that one tends to marry those that are near at hand. Regardless of conceptions of romantic love, the "one and only" typically lives within driving distance (Buss, 1985). Cultural institutions such as colleges and universities Personality and Mate Preferences 109 may promote assortative mating by preferentially admitting those who are similar with respect to certain variables such as intelligence, motivation , and in some cases social skills. Little is known, however, about one potentially powerful cause of assortative mating: Do men and women actively desire those who are similar to themselves? And do people's …