Together by chance? Individual differences and romantic relationships
Personality; selfesteem; attachment; mate value
In the last decades, studies with sexual selection in the human species have turned their attention to individual aspects, such as selfesteem, sociossexuality, personality, and attachment. Selfesteem is a social thermometre that indicates to an individual when he has to change his or her behavior. Sociossexuality can be defined as a behavioral tendency of one person engage in casual sex. Personality is a set of psychological traits, that are defined by the interaction between genetic predisposition and environment. The romantic attachment can be described as a set of behavioral tendencies that assists the individual to maintain emotional bonds. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between selfesteem, sociossexuality, romantic attachment, personality, self perceived mate value, idealization of a romantic partner and relationship satisfaction in heterossexuals and nonheterossexuals individuals. 385 volunteers participated in the study, 219 were single and 166 were in a long term relationship. The participation consisted in answer a package of questionnaires. Our results show that heterossexual and non-heterossexual men and women differ in their idealization of a romantic partner, and that selfesteem influence the idealization of a romantic partner. On the other hand, selfesteem does not differ between single and committed participants. The sociossexual orientation, the personality traits and the attachment dimensions are different between different sex and sexual orientations. The romantic attachment and the personality traits were capable of predicting the self perceived mate value and the partners evaluation of the individual’s mate value. The romantic attachment, between the studied variables, was the most capable of predicting relationship satisfaction. We suggest that the evolution of selfesteem, personality and sociossexuality could have influenced the mate choice context and that romantic attachment influences the duration of one relationship.