Arousal, Personality, and Assortative Mating in Marriage

It is known that there is significant assortative mating for intelligence. However, where personality is concerned, the picture is less clear, and where physiologically referenced individual differences are concerned, there is a negligible body of available research. A compound major individual difference variable having a putative physiological basis-arousal and the stimulation-seeking motive, which has not heretofore been investigated in studies of assortative mating-was the focus of the present study. In addition, three major personality dimensions-extraversion-introversion, neuroticism and psychoticism-were included for study. One hundred and two married couples in the housing complex of a large American midwestern university were tested on the arousal/ stimulation-seeking and personality measures. Significant assortative mating (p