Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2023 Sep;7(9):1568-1583. doi: 10.1038/s41562-023-01672-z. Epub 2023 Aug 31.
Positive correlations between mates can increase trait variation and prevalence, as well as bias estimates from genetically informed study designs. While past studies of similarity between human mating partners have largely found evidence of positive correlations, to our knowledge, no formal meta-analysis has examined human partner correlations across multiple categories of traits. Thus, we conducted systematic reviews and random-effects meta-analyses of human male-female partner correlations across 22 traits commonly studied by psychologists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, epidemiologists and geneticists. Using ScienceDirect, PubMed and Google Scholar, we incorporated 480 partner correlations from 199 peer-reviewed studies of co-parents, engaged pairs, married pairs and/or cohabitating pairs that were published on or before 16 August 2022. We also calculated 133 trait correlations using up to 79,074 male-female couples in the UK Biobank (UKB). Estimates of the 22 mean meta-analysed correlations ranged from r = 0.08 (adjusted 95% CI = 0.03, 0.13) for extraversion to r = 0.58 (adjusted 95% CI = 0.50, 0.64) for political values, with funnel plots showing little evidence of publication bias across traits. The 133 UKB correlations ranged from r = -0.18 (adjusted 95% CI = -0.20, -0.16) for chronotype (being a 'morning' or 'evening' person) to r = 0.87 (adjusted 95% CI = 0.86, 0.87) for birth year. Across analyses, political and religious attitudes, educational attainment and some substance use traits showed the highest correlations, while psychological (that is, psychiatric/personality) and anthropometric traits generally yielded lower but positive correlations. We observed high levels of between-sample heterogeneity for most meta-analysed traits, probably because of both systematic differences between samples and true differences in partner correlations across populations.
伴侣之间的正相关关系可以增加特征的变异性和普遍性，并影响基于遗传的研究设计的偏差估计。虽然过去关于人类配偶之间相似性的研究大多发现了正相关的证据，但据我们所知，没有正式的荟萃分析检查过人类配偶在多个特征类别中的相关性。因此，我们对心理学家、经济学家、社会学家、人类学家、流行病学家和遗传学家研究的 22 个常见特征的人类男性-女性伴侣相关性进行了系统回顾和随机效应荟萃分析。我们使用 ScienceDirect、PubMed 和 Google Scholar，纳入了 199 项同行评议研究的 480 个伴侣相关性，这些研究涉及亲子、订婚、已婚和/或同居的伴侣，发表时间在 2022 年 8 月 16 日或之前。我们还使用英国生物银行（UKB）中多达 79074 对男性-女性对计算了 133 个特征相关性。22 个平均荟萃分析相关性的估计值范围从外向性的 r=0.08（调整后的 95%置信区间=0.03，0.13）到政治价值观的 r=0.58（调整后的 95%置信区间=0.50，0.64），漏斗图显示出跨特征的出版偏见的证据很少。133 个 UKB 相关性的范围从 r=-0.18（调整后的 95%置信区间=-0.20，-0.16），表示为“晨型”或“晚型”人，到 r=0.87（调整后的 95%置信区间=0.86，0.87），表示为出生年份。在所有分析中，政治和宗教态度、教育程度和一些物质使用特征表现出最高的相关性，而心理（即精神/人格）和人体测量特征通常表现出较低但为正的相关性。我们观察到大多数荟萃分析特征的样本间异质性水平较高，这可能是由于样本之间存在系统差异以及人群中伴侣相关性的真实差异。
