Compatibility and the Development of Premarital Relationships

Abstract

This study contributes to the literature on compatibility in courtship by seeking to identify empirical links between social homogamy, similarity in leisure interests and role performance preferences, and the dynamics of premarital relationships. Data were collected from 168 working-class and middle-class couples married for the first time in central Pennsylvania during the early 1980s. The more similar individuals' role performance preferences and leisure interests were to those of the other sex in the sample, the more compatible they were with the person they married. Nonetheless, even after controlling for how likely individuals were to find a compatible mate in the population of other-sex persons, people tended to be better matched than they would have been had they been randomly paired (i.e., assortative mating appears to be raking place on the basis of leisure interests and role performance preferences). Assortative mating also was found with regard to social characteristics age, education, religion), but such social similarity was related neither to similarity in couples' leisure interests nor to their role preferences, and, with one exception, social similarity was not significantly related to their courtship experiences and evaluations. Similarity in leisure interests and compatible role preferences, however, were related both to partners' subjective evaluations of their courtships (i.e., love, ambivalence) and to how they reportedly interacted with each other (i.e., conflict, efforts to enhance the quality of the relationship). In the conclusion, we place our findings within the context of previous writings on compatibility and mate selection and argue for the importance of establishing empirical linkages between various combinations of the partners' social and psychological attributes and their courtship experiences. Compatibility theories of mate selection suggest that individuals who are well matched on key characteristics marry each other, in part, because such matching increases the likelihood that they will be able to establish a mellifluous and mutually satisfying partnership (Huston, Surra, Fitzgerald, & Cate, 1981; Levinger & Rands, 1985). The standard paradigm for studying the role of compatibility in courtship focuses on. whether people who marry are more similar than would be expected by chance, rather than examining the connection between compatibility and courtship processes. Couples may tend to be homogamous in social characteristics, however, because society is organized in such a way that people meet and interact with others who are similar in these characteristics. Moreover, individuals whose characteristics are common in the population are apt to be better matched than others. These effects of propinquity and individual attributes on the extent of matching must be distinguished from the tendency, if any, for people to express preferences for social similarity through choices made among a pool of diverse others. One line of research bearing on this issue examines how distributions of social attributes in the population affect the likelihood that people will marry someone who is socially similar (e.g., Blau, Beeker, & Fitzpatrick, 1984; Blau, Blum, & Schwartz, 1982; Glenn, 1984; Schoen & Wooldredge, 1989; see Surra, 1990, for an integrative review). The causal impact of social homogamy on the interpersonal dynamics of courtship, however, has yet to be explored. The present study seeks to contribute to understanding how compatibility affects courtship and mate selection. Social homogamy may account, in part, for psychological similarity and, as a result, have an indirect impact on both courtship processes and mate selection outcomes. Therefore, this study examines the extent of association between social homogamy and psychological dispositions that seem particularly germane to courtship (Levinger & Rands, 1985). These psychological dispositions are then linked to features of the premarital relationship such as the amount of conflict, the amount of turbulence during courtship, and how deeply the individuals reportedly fall in love. …

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