1 Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge.
2 Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Psychol Sci. 2017 Mar;28(3):276-284. doi: 10.1177/0956797616678187. Epub 2017 Jan 1.
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.
朋友和配偶在很多方面都很相似，比如年龄、教育水平、种族、宗教、态度和一般智力。令人惊讶的是，在个性这一最基本的心理结构上，几乎没有发现相似的证据。我们认为，缺乏个性相似性的证据源于个体在回应人格研究中常用的自我报告和同伴报告问卷时，倾向于根据一个显著的比较群体来做出人格判断，而不是根据绝对标准（即参照群体效应）。我们采用了两种基于行为的人格测量方法来避免参照群体效应。基于大样本的结果为浪漫伴侣（n=1101；rs=.20-.47）和朋友（n=46483；rs=.12-.31）之间的人格相似性提供了证据。我们讨论了这些发现的实际和方法学意义。
