Psychologist Researches Characteristics of Couples

As part of his ongoing research into the way couples choose each other. David M. Buss, assistant professor of psychology, is asking pairs of undergraduates several hundred questions about each other and about themselves.

The questions range from how often your mate bounces checks or dominates a conversation, to how often you go to a party together.

The goal of the study is to learn more about how couples come together and interact with one another, Buss said. Buss added that human mate selection is a very complicated process which can be studied in many ways.

He cited evolutionary biology, behavioral genetics, psychology, and sociology as several of the disciplines concerned with mate selection.

A unique feature of Buss's study is that "it deals with an elite group of highly educated people," he said. "This group is almost never examined in terms of the mating process," Buss added.

To date, 44 couples, most of whom learned of the study through advertisements and posters, have participated in the study. Buss said that he hopes to have finished the study of a total of 60 couples within 10 days. Volunteers are paid $25 to take part in the survey, which takes a total of about five and one-half hours to complete.

The study is particularly interested in the process of assortative mating--the non-ratdom coupling of individuals based on observable characteristics.

Buss asks each member of a couple to answer the same questions about themselves and about their partner. He then compares the responses to look for similarities and differences in such diverse things as height, social actions, and personality dispositions.

He also interviews each couple together for about a half hour.

The many types of data used in the study make it unique among studies of the mating process, said Buss. "There are problems with every method used in the social sciences," he said. "We employ several methods to get results which are not method-bound."

In addition to a $25 check and a summary of the major results of the study, each couple will receive individual feedback from the study in the form of a personality profile showing where they stand relative to group averages.

Buss said he hopes to conduct a follow-up study on the 60 couples next fall to see how their relationships have progressed.

The research is being funded solely by the University, said E.L. Pattullo, director of the Center for Behavioral Sciences.

In 1982, Buss conducted a similar study on married couples, and he plans to focus his next study on newlyweds.