The Role of Genes and Environment in Degree of Partner Self-Similarity

Choice of romantic partner is an enormously important component of human life, impacting almost every facet of day-to-day existence, however; the processes underlying this choice are remarkably complex and have so far been largely resistant to scientific explanation. One consistent finding is that,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavior genetics 2017, Vol.47 (1), p.25-35
Main Authors: Sherlock, James M., Verweij, Karin J. H., Murphy, Sean C., Heath, Andrew C., Martin, Nicholas G., Zietsch, Brendan P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Assortative mating
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Choice Behavior
Clinical Psychology
Couples
Education
Female
Gene-Environment Interaction
Genes
Genetic factors
Health Psychology
Humans
Male
Mating
Middle Aged
Modelling
Original Research
Phenotypes
Preferences
Psychology
Public Health
Quantitative genetics
Quantitative Trait, Heritable
Religiosity
Social attitudes
Spouses
Twins
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Choice of romantic partner is an enormously important component of human life, impacting almost every facet of day-to-day existence, however; the processes underlying this choice are remarkably complex and have so far been largely resistant to scientific explanation. One consistent finding is that, on average, members of romantic dyads tend to be more alike than would be expected by chance. Selecting for self-similarity is at least partially driven by phenotypic matching wherein couples share similar phenotypes, and preferences for a number of these traits are partly genetically influenced (e.g., education, height, social attitudes and religiosity). This suggests that genetically influenced preferences for self-similarity might contribute to phenotypic matching (and thus assortative mating), but it has never been studied in actual couples. In the present study, we use a large sample of twins to model sources of variation in self-similarity between partners. Biometrical modelling revealed that very little of the variation in the tendency to assortatively mate across 14 traits was due to genetic effects (7 %) or the shared environment of twins (0 %).
ISSN:0001-8244
1573-3297
DOI:10.1007/s10519-016-9808-0