PERSONALITY TRAITS IN THE MATE CHOICE: HOMOGAMY AND/OR SEXUAL IMPRINTING

• Authors: Gyuris Petra , Tamás Bereczkei , Róbert Járai

Title variants

HU

Személyiségvonások a párválasztásban: homogámia és/vagy szexuális imprinting

• Languages of publication: HU

Abstracts

EN

We have made an attempt at demonstrating the effect of sexual imprinting mechanism on human mate choice. In our former studies, we had focused on facial similarities between couples, now we wondered if homogamy is represented in personality characters, as well. Two hundred ninety six participants (49 couples and their parents) filled in the Caprara’s BIG FIVE Questionnaire. The couples were also asked to complete the s-EMBU retrospective attachment test (including Emotional warmth, Rejection, Overprotection scales). Significant resemblances were found between the males’ wife and mother in Social Desirability and Conscientiousness traits of the BFQ. Our results on the effects of maternal rearing behavior style on their son’s mating revealed controversial patterns. Scores on Rejection scale of s-EMBU were associated with Emotional Lability, and Emotional Warmth with Agreeableness trait, which supports our expectation. However, another analysis of maternal rearing has shown that those men who developed an unfavorable attachment with their mother during childhood would be attracted to women who are similar to her in Emotional Lability and Social Desirability traits, which seems to contradict our hypothesis. As for women’s mate choice, only one tendency has been revealed for supporting the sexual imprinting hypothesis: those women who had experienced high Emotional Warmth from their father during childhood chose men who resembled their father in Conscientiousness factor of the BFQ.

Keywords

EN

mate choice; personality traits; homogamy; sexual imprinting

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: Hungarian Association for Psychology
• Journal: Magyar Pszichologiai Szemle (Hungarian Psychological Review)
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 117-132
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Gyuris Petra

author

Tamás Bereczkei

author

Róbert Járai