School of Population Health, Curtin University, Bentley, WA, 6102, Australia.
Arch Sex Behav. 2023 Oct;52(7):3025-3042. doi: 10.1007/s10508-023-02646-y. Epub 2023 Jul 7.
Research regarding how people choose their long-term romantic partners is extensive, but the understanding of the psychological processes behind these choices, and predicting who people choose, is elusive. This review attempts to examine potential reasons for this elusive nature by first outlining the current state of the literature and then highlighting issues within the current paradigm. First among these issues is a focus on singular perspectives and little attempt to integrate these perspectives with others. Second, many studies focus on increasingly complex designs to explore the predictive utility of trait preferences, attempts which have had only limited success. Third, novel findings appear to be unintegrated with established findings, leaving the potential combination of these ideas unrealized. Finally, long-term romantic partner selection is a complex psychological phenomenon, but current theory and research methodologies are not sufficiently addressing this complexity. This review concludes with suggestions for future research direction, including a focus on the psychology behind the partner selection process and the potential of qualitative enquiry to reveal novel pathways behind these psychological processes. There is a need for an integrative framework that permits the coexistence of established and novel ideas, and multiple perspectives, from both current and future research paradigms.
关于人们如何选择长期浪漫伴侣的研究已经很广泛了，但对于这些选择背后的心理过程的理解，以及对人们选择对象的预测，仍然难以捉摸。本综述试图通过首先概述当前文献的状况，然后突出当前范式内的问题，来检验这种难以捉摸的性质的潜在原因。首先，这些问题中存在的一个焦点是单一视角，很少试图将这些视角与其他视角结合起来。其次，许多研究关注越来越复杂的设计，以探索特质偏好的预测效用，这些尝试仅取得了有限的成功。第三，新的发现似乎与已建立的发现没有融合，使得这些想法的潜在组合没有实现。最后，长期浪漫伴侣的选择是一个复杂的心理现象，但当前的理论和研究方法并没有充分解决这种复杂性。本综述最后提出了未来研究方向的建议，包括关注伴侣选择过程背后的心理学，以及定性研究可能揭示这些心理过程背后的新途径。需要一个综合框架，允许现有和新思想以及来自当前和未来研究范式的多种观点共存。
