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Meh To Matches

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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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Meh To Matches

Robin Hanson
Aug 19, 2010
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Meh To Matches

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Human aversion to being overtly ranked makes them look too often for good matches, rather than just for good people. For example, kids choosing a college are usually overly concerned with finding a good “match,” when then should just focus on the best college that is cheap and conveniently located.

Similarly for relationships. Bryan Caplan tells me that although spouses tend to have similar religion, politics, education, wealth, and intelligence, their personalities are not correlated.  Turns out, there are no personality interaction effects for relation and life satisfaction: your personality and their personality matter, but not the combination:

Three very large, nationally representative samples of married couples were used to examine the relative importance of 3 types of personality effects on relationship and life satisfaction. … Using data sets from Australia (N = 5,278), the United Kingdom (N = 6,554), and Germany (N = 11,418) … Actor effects accounted for approximately 6% of the variance in relationship satisfaction and between 10% and 15% of the variance in life satisfaction. Partner effects (which were largest for Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability) accounted for between 1% and 3% of the variance in relationship satisfaction and between 1% and 2% of the variance in life satisfaction. Couple similarity consistently explained less than .5% of the variance in life and relationship satisfaction after controlling for actor and partner effects.

If you want a happy relationship, be a happy person and pick a happy partner; no need to worry about how well you match personality-wise.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter
May 15

http://www.thebigquestions....

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Stephen Diamond
May 15

A general aversion to being overtly ranked (even to getting the highest ranking)? Do you have a reference which develops this claim?

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