Social Attitudes and Language Use, Not Cognitive Ability in Spouse Choice

Assortative mating for cognitive abilities, personality, and attitudes: Offspring from the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition

Nagoshi, Craig T; Johnson, Ronald C; Honbo, Kelly A

Personality & Individual Differences. Vol 13(8), Aug 1992, pp. 883-891

Conducted a follow-up of 59 spouse pairs of Caucasian ancestry, 37 spouse pairs of Japanese ancestry, and 50 spouse pairs of mixed ethnicity who completed a set of personality, social attitude, and language use measures. Spouse correlations were essentially zero for cognitive abilities and low for personality measures, but were substantial for social attitudes and language use. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of cultural factors in assortative mating.