Browsing by Subject "pariskunnat"

Because personality can be defined as a relatively permanent and individual way of thinking, feeling, and acting, and because personal values can be used to explain our motives and attitudes, both personality and personal values may be considered to influence mate selection. The similarity of couples has been observed to be linked to relationship satisfaction and a smaller divorce risk, which makes the consistent study of couple similarity important. The purpose of this study was to investigate couple similarity in Big Five personality traits, as well as in the 10 and 19 personal values defined by Schwartz. Based on these theories and earlier research, three hypotheses could be set, according to which couples are similar (1) in the personality traits of openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion, (2) on the motivational dimensions of personal values, and in hedonism, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security from the 10 value types, and (3) in hedonism and tradition, as well as in all the specified value types of self-direction, universalism, benevolence, conformity, and security from the 19 value types. The sample of this study was a part of a larger project, and it consisted of 261 18-55-year-old heterosexual couples, all of which were either parents of small children, expecting their first child, or university students and their spouses. The results of this study principally corresponded to the hypotheses. The couples were observed to be similar in all Big five personality traits, on the motivational value dimensions, in universalism, tradition, conformity, hedonism, self-direction, security, benevolence, achievement, and power from the 10 value types, in all of the specified value types of universalism, self-direction, conformity, and power, as well as in the specified value types of benevolence-dependability, security-societal, humility, and face from the 19 value types. According to these results, it seems that men and women do not end up in relationships completely arbitrarily, but that personality traits and personal values guide couple formation at least to some extent.