The Correlation Research Between Assortative Mating And Marital Satisfaction In Newlyweds

Nearly everyone would have a marriage, Foreign and domestic researchers havefocused on the research of marriage, and primarily focus on assortative mating andmarital satisfaction. Assortative mating, the nonrandom coupling of individuals basedon their resemblance to each other on one or more characteristics, the controversy onassortative mating has typically been framed in terms of the similarity versuscomplementarity. It is inconsistent refer to the correlation between marital satisfactionand couple similarity respect to attachment and personality dimensions in previousresearches. While it is not consistent on the computing of couple similarity. Thevariable-centered approach (VCA) computes absolute difference score (ADS) to becouple similarity, while the couple-centered approach computes profile similarityindex (PSC) to be couple similarity. Moreover, on the measurements of maritalsatisfaction, previous researches primarily based on self-report, but this measurementwas limited by response bias, it may not be one’s true attitude towards maritalsatisfaction.The current research examined the correlation between marital satisfaction andcouple similarity respect to attachment and personality dimensions in a sample of70newlyweds. Couple similarity used both a variable-centered approach and acouple-centered approach, Marital satisfaction was measured using traditionalself-report measurement and the implicit association test(IAT) in Social cognition.Three studies are employed in the current research.The first study aimed to examine assortative mating refer to attachment andpersonality dimensions in newlyweds, and explore the possible reasons. Results showthat among newlyweds in this sample there is substantial positive assortment on age,weak positive assortment on attachment and personality domains. Couple similarity isnot simply due to social homogamy hypothesis and reflected active assortment, notdue to convergence hypothesis and reflected initial assortment. The second study aimed to examine the relationship of explicit maritalsatisfaction and implicit marital satisfaction. The study designed some IAT tasks toexplore implicit marital satisfaction. It presumed that if the participants are quicker toassociate "my marriage" with "positive words" compared to "my marriage"with "negative words", then it means the participants are in favor of positive maritalsatisfaction, and vice versa. Results show that the participants are quicker to associate"my marriage" with "positive words" compared to "my marriage" with "negativewords". Furthermore, structural equation modeling revealed that implicit maritalsatisfaction and explicit marital satisfaction are two distinct constructs.The third study aimed to examine the relationship of marital satisfaction andcouple similarity on attachment and personality dimensions. Couple similarityincluded profile-based similarity and absolute difference-score-based similarity;marital satisfaction included explicit marital satisfaction and implicit maritalsatisfaction. Results show that implicit marital satisfaction had no relation with ADS,PSC on attachment and personality dimensions. Explicit marital satisfaction had norelation with ADS on attachment and personality dimensions. While explicit maritalsatisfaction had significant correlation with PSC on attachment and personalitydimensions. In addition, profile-based similarity appears to be a much betterpredictor of marital satisfaction than absolute difference-score-based similarity.