Birds of a Feather Do Flock Together: Behavior-Based Personality-Assessment Method Reveals Personality Similarity Among Couples and Friends

作者：Wu Youyou^*; Stillwell David; Schwartz H Andrew; Kosinski Michal

来源：Psychological Science, 2017, 28(3): 276-284.

DOI：10.1177/0956797616678187

• similarity
• personality assessment
• reference-group effect
• social network
• close relationships

Friends and spouses tend to be similar in a broad range of characteristics, such as age, educational level, race, religion, attitudes, and general intelligence. Surprisingly, little evidence has been found for similarity in personality-one of the most fundamental psychological constructs. We argue that the lack of evidence for personality similarity stems from the tendency of individuals to make personality judgments relative to a salient comparison group, rather than in absolute terms (i.e., the reference-group effect), when responding to the self-report and peer-report questionnaires commonly used in personality research. We employed two behavior-based personality measures to circumvent the reference-group effect. The results based on large samples provide evidence for personality similarity between romantic partners (n = 1,101; rs =.20-. 47) and between friends (n = 46,483; rs =.12-. 31). We discuss the practical and methodological implications of the findings.

• 出版日期2017-3
• 单位西北大学