Marriage and Divorce
Theories of marital choice have generally looked for a basis in either
similarity or complementarity . There is good evidence that people domarry others of similar social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds andthat physical attractiveness is a powerful determinant—the rich andbeautiful tend to marry the rich and beautiful. There is also clinical evi -
dence, of the kind reported by Farrell and Rosenberg (1981), that mari -
tal relationships often evolve complementary functions. But when per -
sonality measures are used, they frequently fail to predict marital
choice: Extraverts are just as likely to marry introverts as they are tomarry extraverts; adjusted people choose neurotic spouses as often asadjusted ones. There seems to be a small influence of similarity in thedomain of Openness—open people tend a bit toward marrying openpeople (McCrae, 1996)—but that may in part be an artifact of similari-ties in social class, education, and so on: When two college graduatesmarry , both of them are likely to be more open than high school drop-outs.
This might seem to be a defeat for trait psychology: The major di-
mensions of individual difference seem to have little influence on one ofthe most significant decisions of our life. Indeed, it is a healthy re-minder that traits cannot explain everything . But it leads to a series of
fascinating and thus far almost completely unexplored questions. Whywould a well-adjusted person take on the difficult task of trying to livewith an anxious, hostile, and depressed mate? Why would an open per-son consent to live with one who was closed? And, more than why , howdo they manage together? When an introvert marries an extravert, doesit lead to conflicts in their joint social life, do they arrange to live sepa -
rate lives, or does the extravert “bring out” the extraverted side of his or
her spouse? Does it matter whether the husband or the wife is the intro -
vert: Will the husband’s preferred style of socializing prevail regardless
of what it is? Psychologists have spent a great deal of time studying howone individual adapts to an environment, but how do two individualsadapt to the environment they create for each other?
Buss and Barnes (1986) have begun to study some of these issues
by looking at mate preferences. Individuals seek spouses with differentcharacteristics: kindness, intelligence, attractiveness, wealth, and so on.In Buss and Barnes’s study these preferences tended to reflect personal -
ity characteristics—although there appeared to be frequent sex differ -224 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD