Abstract
Traditional studies of mate selection have not addressed the question of how a marital correlation arises. The common assumption that assortative mating is based on phenotype has not been properly tested. Social background may be a major determinant of choice of spouse. We show how the collection of data on monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs and their spouses, and estimation of all possible correlations between the twin pairs and their spouses, will allow these alternative hypotheses to be tested. Power simulations show that it will be feasible to resolve the contributions of phenotype and social background to mate selection for variables such as IQ, education, and attitudes for which the marital correlation is moderately high.
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Research reported in this paper was supported by a postgraduate studentship to ACH from the United Kingdom Medical Research Council and by Grants GM30250 and HL28922 from the National Institutes of Health. We are grateful to Drs. N. G. Martin, C. R. Cloninger, D. C. Rao, and W. E. Nance for helpful comments on early drafts of this paper.
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Heath, A.C., Eaves, L.J. Resolving the effects of phenotype and social background on mate selection. Behav Genet 15, 15–30 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01071929
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01071929