PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Two Personalities, One Relationship: Both Partners' Personality Traits

Shape the Quality of Their Relationship

Richard W. Robins Avshalom Caspi and Terrie E. Moffitt

University of California at Davis Institute of Psychiatry, London,
and University of Wisconsin—Madison

This research tested 6 models of the independent and interactive effects of stable personality traits on
each partner's reports of relationship satisfaction and quality. Both members of 360 couples (N = 720)
completed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire and were interviewed about their relationship.
Findings show that a woman's relationship happiness is predicted by her partner's low Negative
Emotionality, high Positive Emotionality, and high Constraint, whereas a man's relationship happiness
is predicted only by his partner's low Negative Emotionality. Findings also show evidence of additive but
not interactive effects: Each partner's personality contributed independently to relationship outcomes but
not in a synergistic way. These results are discussed in relation to models that seek to integrate research
on individual differences in personality traits with research on interpersonal processes in intimate
relationships.

Researchers have been interested in understanding the influence
of personality on relationships for several decades. A number of
early studies compared happily married and unhappily married
couples and found relatively strong personality correlates (e.g.,
Barry, 1970; Bentler & Newcomb, 1978; Burgess & Wallin, 1953;
Dean, 1966; Eysenck & Wakefield, 1981; Kelly & Conley, 1987;
Terman & Buttenweiser, 1935). About two decades ago, relation-
ship researchers began to abandon the approach adopted in these
early personality studies. One cause of the demise of interest was
the relatively weak methodologies used in early studies. For the
most part, researchers studied only one member of the couple and
Richard W. Robins, Department of Psychology, University of California
at Davis; Avshalom Caspi and Terrie E. Moffitt, Social, Genetic, and
Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Lon-
don, and Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin—Madison.
This study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants
MH-45070, MH-49414, and MH-56344, by grants from the Graduate
School of the University of Wisconsin and the U. K. Medical Research
Council, and by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of California
at Davis. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Re-
search Unit is supported by the New Zealand Health Research Council.
This article benefited greatly from comments by R. Chris Fraley and
Samuel D. Gosling. We are grateful to the Dunedin Unit investigators and
staff and to the study members and their partners.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Richard
W. Robins, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis,
California 95616-8686, or to Terrie E. Moffitt, Social, Genetic and De-
velopmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, 111 Den-
mark Hill, London SE5 8AF, England. Electronic mail may be sent to
rwrobins @ ucdavis .edu.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, Vol. 79, No. 2, 251-259
Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. O022-3514/00/$5.00
relied exclusively on self-report data for both the personality and
relationship outcome measures. Moreover, even when both couple
members were studied, the procedures for analyzing couple data
had not yet been developed. Finally, many of the personality scales
used in these studies had poor construct validity, and there was
little attempt to integrate the findings within a broader structural
model of personality. This led to a confusing set of findings and a
corresponding belief that research on personality and relationships
was not fruitful.
Perhaps more important than these methodological concerns
was a theoretical shift away from stable individual differences.
Researchers from a number of areas rejected the view that rela-
tionships could be understood by studying the character of indi-
vidual partners rather than the relationship itself. Over the past
couple of decades, relationship research has generally gone in
three directions (Berscheid & Reis, 1998): clinical research on
microinteractional processes, social psychological research on in-
terpersonal dynamics in "close" relationships, and sociological
research on marital happiness and life course dynamics. All three
of these research traditions moved the field away from the study of
individual differences, and personality traits do not play a prom-
inent role in contemporary research and theory on relationships.
The most notable exception is research on attachment style, which
has surged in popularity over the past decade (Cassidy & Shaver,
1999).
The movement away from the study of personality traits oc-
curred at a time when the person-situation debate was raging.
Although personality research has seen a resurgence over the past
decade (Pervin & John, 1999), the relationship field has beeixslow
to return to the study of stable traits. Yet, there are several reasons
DOI: 10.1037//O022-3514.79.2.251

251
252 ROBINS, CASPI, AND MOFFTTT
to believe that personality variables can play a prominent role in
relationship research. First, despite its flaws, the early research
literature did provide some evidence that stable personality traits
play a crucial role in determining the nature of a relationship
(Buss, 1991; Eysenck & Wakefield, 1981). Second, we have a
much better understanding of personality traits now than we did 20
years ago. We know more about their heritability, developmental
origins, neurobiological substrates, and how they relate to a host of
other social and psychological variables across the lifespan. We
also now have better personality measures, with stronger psycho-
metric properties and more elaborated nomological networks.
Third, recent behavioral genetic research provides another reason
to believe that stable personality traits matter in relationships.
Evidence from twin studies shows that heritable personality traits
can precipitate relationship problems and contribute to marital
dissolution (Jockin, McGue, & Lykken, 1996). Finally, previous
attempts to understand the role of personality in relationships were
not fruitful, in part because they did not take into account how the
personalities of both couple members jointly influence the
relationship.
In this study, we used the personality traits of both partners to
predict each partner's perception of the relationship. Both couple
members (720 individuals) completed a comprehensive personal-
ity questionnaire and were interviewed about the positive and
negative aspects of their relationship. Using these data, we tested
six models of the independent and interactive effects of personality
on reports of relationship satisfaction and quality. These six mod-
els are variants of the general model of the effects of personality on
relationship outcomes shown in Figure 1 (Caspi, Herbener, &
Ozer, 1992; Gonzalez & Griffin, 1997,1999; Kenny, 1995, 1998).
The six models are not mutually exclusive, although in some cases
support for one requires or precludes support for another.
The first model {actor effects) predicts that the actor's person-
ality will influence his or her own perception of the relationship
(Paths a and d in Figure 1). The second model {partner effects)
predicts that the actor's own personality will influence how his or
her partner perceives the relationship (Paths b and c in Figure 1).
The presence of both actor and partner effects would suggest that
personality has an effect on the actual quality of the relationship
and not just on the individual's perception of the relationship
(which may be biased by idealization, self-deception, mood-
congruent cognition, and other psychological processes).
The third model (gender specificity) predicts that the man's
personality will have different effects on the relationship than will
Woman's
Relationship
Outcome
Figure I. A general model of the effects of personality on relationship
outcomes. Paths a and d represent actor effects; Paths b and c represent
partner effects; Path e represents personality similarity between the part-
ners.
the woman's personality. These gender differences can take three
forms: differences in the actor effect (Paths a and d differ from
each other), differences in the partner effect (Paths b and c differ
from each other), and differences in both the actor and the partner
effects (Paths a and b differ from Paths c and d).
The fourth model {additive effects) predicts that each couple
member contributes uniquely to the quality of the relationship.
This model can be tested by examining the effects of the man's
personality on relationship outcomes while controlling for the
effects of the woman's personality, and vice versa. Paths a and c
would indicate additive effects on the man's outcomes, and Paths
b and d would indicate additive effects on the woman's outcomes.
Thus, additive effects require the presence of both an actor and a
partner effect, although the presence of an actor and a partner
effect do not necessarily indicate additive effects.
The fifth model (synergy) predicts a synergistic interaction
between the man's and the woman's personality. In this case, not
only do the personality traits of both partners explain unique
variance in relationship outcomes, as predicted by the additive
model, but they do so in a multiplicative (or nonadditive) way. A
statistical interaction between Paths a and c would suggest syner-
gistic effects on the man's outcomes, and a statistical interaction
between Paths b and d would suggest synergistic effects on the
woman's outcomes.
The sixth model (similarity) predicts that greater similarity
between partners will be associated with higher levels of relation-
ship satisfaction and quality (e.g., Eysenck & Wakefield, 1981). In
this case, it is not the particular traits characterizing each partner
that influence relationship outcomes, but rather it is how much the
couple members resemble each other on those traits that matters
most.
Method
Research Participants
We studied 360 couples recruited through the Dunedin Study, a longi-
tudinal investigation of health and behavior (for a detailed description of
the study, see Silva & Stanton, 1996). The 1,020 living original study
members were asked prior to their follow-up interview at age 21 (held
during 1993-1994) if they had a partner to whom they were married or
with whom they were engaged, dating for 6 months or more, or cohabiting.
A total of 474 study members indicated that they were involved with a
partner who met one of those criteria, and 76% (360) of the partners agreed
to participate in the interviews. Of the 360 couples interviewed, 52% were
in dating relationships, 41% were in cohabiting relationships, and 7% were
married. The average relationship length was 26 months, with 73% of the
relationships having lasted for more than a year and 45% having lasted for
more than 2 years. All original study members were 21 years old; the men
from the original sample tended to have slightly younger women as
partners (Mdn = 20; range = 16 to 29 years), whereas the women from the
original sample tended to have slightly older men as partners (Mdn = 22;
range = 17 to 39 years). Thus, the female members of our couple sample
were significantly younger (M = 20.7, SD = 1.3) than the male couple
members (M = 22.2, SD = 2.8), t(359) = 9.91, p < .01.
Study members are predominantly of European ancestry. Three of the
Dunedin couples were same-gender couples, which is consistent with
surveys of sexual-orientation prevalence in the general population (e.g.,
Laumann, Gagnon, Micahel, & Michaels, 1994). These couples were
included in all analyses except those that required both members of the
couple (e.g., tests of the 6 models).
 PERSONALITY CORRELATES OF RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION
The 360 study members whose partners participated did not differ
significantly from the 114 study members whose partners did not partici-
pate in mean educational attainment, r(446) = .32, p = .75, in the average
ages of their partners, f(468) = 1.32, p = .19, or on any of the measures
of personality and relationship outcomes examined in the present study (all
/>s > .10). However, study members with participating partners were in
relationships of longer duration, f(450) = 3.04, p < .01, than were study
members whose partners did not participate.
Measurement of Personality
We used the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; Telle-
gen, 1982) to assess the personality traits of each relationship partner. The
MPQ assesses a broad range of individual differences in affective and
behavioral style and includes 10 primary scales. (The Absorption scale was
not included in this version of the MPQ.) Alpha reliabilities in the present
sample ranged from .63 to .80 (Mdn = .75). The 10 primary scales define 3
higher order superfactors: Negative Emotionality, Positive Emotionality,
and Constraint (Tellegen & Waller, in press). The Negative Emotionality
factor consists of the Stress Reaction, Alienation, and Aggression scales;
individuals scoring high on Negative Emotionality have a low threshold for
the experience of negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anger.
Positive Emotionality consists of the Well-Being, Social Potency, Social
Closeness, and Achievement scales; individuals scoring high on Positive
Emotionality have a low threshold for the experience of positive emotions
and tend to view life as an essentially pleasurable experience. The Con-
straint factor consists of the Control, Harm Avoidance, and Traditionalism
scales; individuals scoring high on Constraint tend to act in a cautious and
restrained manner, avoid thrills, and endorse and conform to social norms.
The MPQ was completed by the original members of the Dunedin study,
when they were 18 years old, and by their relationship partners 3 years
later.1
Measurement of Relationship Quality and Satisfaction
The two couple members were interviewed privately and separately,
with confidentiality guaranteed. Couple members were interviewed simul-
taneously by different interviewers who were blind to the responses pro-
vided by the other member of the couple. Couple members did not know
in advance the content of the interview schedule, which eliminated the
possibility that couples would confer about their responses prior to the
interview.
Relationship quality was assessed using 40 interview questions that
asked about shared activities and interests, the balance of power, respect
and fairness, emotional intimacy and trust, and open communication.
Answers were coded as 0 (almost never), 1 (sometimes), or 2 (almost
always) and were summed across items to generate a score for each couple
member (a = .90). Relationship satisfaction was assessed using 14 inter-
view questions that asked how satisfied the respondent was with different
domains in the relationship (e.g., finances, sex, division of labor, future
plans, shared time). Answers were coded as 0 (not happy), 1 (somewhat
happy), or 2 (very happy) and summed across items to generate a score for
each couple member (a = .80).
Results
Intercorrelations, Gender Differences, and Similarity
Between Couple Members
The three MPQ superfactor scales were weakly intercorrelated
for both men and women (rs ranging from —.26 to .10). This
pattern suggests that Negative Emotionality, Positive Emotional-
ity, and Constraint represent three relatively independent dimen-
sions of personality, which is consistent with previous research and
253
theory (e.g., Tellegen & Waller, in press). The two relationship
outcomes were strongly correlated for men (r = .71) and for
women (r — .68), suggesting that relationships characterized by
positive interpersonal interactions (e.g., intimacy and trust) also
tend to be characterized by a high level of satisfaction with specific
domains of the relationship (e.g., finances and sex).
There were significant gender differences for Constraint and
Positive Emotionality. Men were higher in Positive Emotionality,
matched pairs r(338) = 4.8, Cohen's d = .36, p < .01. Women
were higher in Constraint, matched pairs f(338) = 8.6, d = .62,
p < .01. In terms of relationship outcomes, men were more
satisfied in their relationships than women, matched pairs
f(349) = 3.9, d = .24, p < .01, but this difference did not hold for
relationship quality {d = .00).
To examine similarity between couple members, we correlated
the man's personality (or relationship outcome) score with the
woman's score on the same variable. The weak correlations for
personality (ranging from .05 to .10) indicate that there was
relatively little assortative mating in the present sample, which is
consistent with previous research (for studies of this topic using
the MPQ, see Lykken & Tellegen, 1993; Waller & Shaver, 1994;
see also Krueger, Moffitt, Caspi, Bleske, & Silva, 1998). In con-
trast, men and women did report similar levels of relationship
quality (r = .50) and satisfaction (r = .33).2
Which Personality Traits Contribute to a
Happy Relationship?
We used multiple regression analyses to test whether the
personality traits of both partners independently shape their
perceptions of the relationship. In each analysis we simulta-
neously entered two independent variables—the man's and the
woman's MPQ score; a separate analysis was conducted for
each of the 3 superfactors and for each of the 10 primary scales.
The dependent variables were the male and female reports of
relationship quality and satisfaction; thus, the analyses were
conducted across 360 couples. The results of these analyses
provide tests of actor (Model 1), partner (Model 2), gender-
specific (Model 3), and additive (Model 4) effects.3 We present
1
We conducted a series of moderated multiple regression analyses to
determine whether time of testing moderated any of the findings. Specif-
ically, we examined the interaction between personality and a dummy
variable coded for age 18 versus 21 assessment of the MPQ. We did not
find any significant interactions for any of the findings to be reported. The
high stability of personality from age 18 to 21 probably accounts for the
fact that the concurrent effects are not significantly stronger than the
longitudinal effects.
2
Another way to calculate the similarity between partners is using a
partial pairwise intraclass correlation (Gonzalez & Griffin, 1999, Equation
2). The partial intraclass correlations were similar in magnitude to the
Pearson correlations: .11 (Negative Emotionality), .05 (Positive Emotion-
ality), .11 (Constraint), .45 (relationship quality), .32 (relationship satis-
faction).
3
The gender-specificity model cannot be completely tested using mul-
tiple regression. Although the multiple regression analyses show differ-
ences in the magnitude of the male and female effects, the statistical
significance of these differences must be tested using structural equation
modeling. As recommended by Kenny (1996, 1998) and Gonzales and
Griffin (1997), we constrained the male and female paths to be equal and
254 ROBINS, CASPI, AND MOFFITT

Man's Report of
Quality/Satisfaction

Woman's Woman's Report of

Negative Quality/Satisfaction
Emotionality

B Man's Man's Report of

16**/.16**
Positive Quality/Satisfaction
Emotionality

Woman's Woman's Report of

Positive Quality/Satisfaction
Emotionality

Man's Man's Report of

.28**7.16**
Constraint Quality/Satisfaction

Woman's Woman's Report of

Constraint Quality/Satisfaction

Figure 2. Panel A: The effects of Negative Emotionality on relationship quality and satisfaction. Panel B: The
effects of Positive Emotionality on relationship quality and satisfaction. Panel C: The effects of Constraint on
relationship quality and satisfaction. Values are standardized beta weights (except for the assortative mating
correlation) from four separate regression analyses, predicting the man's reports of quality and satisfaction and
the woman's reports of quality and satisfaction. * p < .05. ** p < .01.

the tests for synergistic (Model 5) and similarity (Model 6)
effects in subsequent sections. The results of the multiple
regression analyses are shown in Figure 2 for Negative Emo-
tionality, Positive Emotionality, and Constraint. To help inter-
pret the effects observed at the level of the superfactors, Table
then evaluated the significance of the equality constraints by chi-square
tests of the difference in the fit of die constrained and unconstrained
models. If the unconstrained model fit significantly better, then there was
a significant gender difference. To test the gender-specificity model, we
conducted three analyses. First, we constrained Paths a and d (see Figure
1) to be equal, which tests for gender differences in the actor's effect on the
serf. Second, we constrained Paths b and c to be equal, which tests for
gender differences in the actor's effect on the partner. Third, to test for
gender dominance, we constrained Paths a and b to equal paths c and d.
These analyses were conducted using the EQS program.
1 summarizes the results of the multiple regression analyses for
the 10 MPQ primary scales.
Negative Emotionality. Negative Emotionality had strong and
consistent effects on the two relationship outcomes. In terms of
actor effects, both men and women high in Negative Emotionality
reported lower levels of satisfaction and quality. These effects held
for all three primary scales related to Negative Emotionality:
Aggressive, alienated, and stress-reactive men and women tended
to be unhappy in their relationships. In terms of partner effects,
both men and women were unhappy when their partners were high
in Negative Emotionality (even after controlling for their own
level of Negative Emotionality). Analyses of the primary scales
showed that the crucial dimension for women was whether their
partner was aggressive, whereas the crucial dimension for men was
whether their partner was alienated and reactive to stress. Overall,
the results point to additive effects—that is, the man's and the
 PERSONALITY CORRELATES OF RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION 255
Table 1
Multiple Regression Analyses Predicting Relationship Outcomes From the Multidimensional
Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) Primary Scales

Male outcome Female outcome

MPQ scale Quality Satisfaction Quality Satisfaction

Negative Emotionality
Aggression
Male -.28* -.20* -.21* -.18*
Female -.06 -.04 -.23* -.25*
Alienation
Male -.19* -.26* -.07 -.06
Female -.14* -.12* -.27* -.26*
Stress reaction
Male -.14* -.26* .00 -.07
Female -.22* -.20* -.29* -.34*
Positive Emotionality
Social closeness
Male .21* .17* .14* .16*
Female .04 .01 .25* .18*
Social potency
Male .02 -.03 .07 .07
Female -.07 -.07 -.02 -.01
Well-being
Male .09 .18* .01 .11*
Female .04 .07 .16* .22*
Achievement
Male .12* .08 .08 .00
Female -.03 -.07 .01 .04
Constraint
Control
Male .22* .08 .18* .16*
Female .11* .02 .14* .13*
Harm avoidance
Male .17* .07 -.03 -.06
Female -.02 .00 .02 -.01
Traditionalism
Male .24* .22* .14* .11*
Female -.05 -.04 -.05 .01

Note. Ns ranged from 345 to 348 for men and from 347 to 351 for women. Values in the table are standardized
beta weights from multiple regression analyses in which the man's and the woman's MPQ scores were used to
predict male and female reported relationship outcomes.
* p < .05.

woman's Negative Emotionality independently influenced each
partner's perception of the relationship.
In terms of gender differences, we found only one significant
difference: the effect of the woman's personality on her own report
of relationship quality was stronger than the effect of the man's
personality on his own report of relationship quality, A ^ ( l ) = 5.1,
p < .05. This difference was not significant for satisfaction,
Ax^l) = 2.0, p > .10. Overall, the findings support the actor,
partner, and additivity models, and provide marginal support for
the gender-specificity model.
Positive Emotionality. The effects of Positive Emotionality
were weaker than those of Negative Emotionality but showed a
consistent pattern across reports of quality and satisfaction (see
Figure 2, Panel B). In terms of actor effects, both men and women
high in Positive Emotionality were happier in their relation-
ships. The primary scale analyses showed that these effects were
due to the social closeness and well-being aspects of Positive
Emotionality.
We found partner effects for the man's Positive Emotionality
but not the woman's. Specifically, men high in Positive Emotion-
ality tended to have satisfied partners.4 This effect was due to
social closeness; men with the capacity for intimacy and the ability
to provide comfort and express warmth tended to have more
4
We tested whether the effect of the man's Positive Emotionality was
independent of his Negative Emotionality. Entering the man's Negative
Emotionality into the regression equations produced little change in the
beta weights for Positive Emotionality, and the effect of Positive Emotion-
ality remained significant for all four dependent variables (man's and
woman's satisfaction and quality ratings). Moreover, entering the man's
Constraint, in addition to his Negative Emotionality, also did not change
the beta weights substantially, and all effects of Positive Emotionality
remained significant except for woman's report of relationship quality
(adding Constraint and Negative Emotionality reduced the beta from. 12 to
.10, p = .07). Thus, the effects of the man's Positive Emotionality are
largely independent of his Negative Emotionality and Constraint.
256 ROBINS, CASPI, AND MOFFTTT
satisfied partners. In contrast, men were not necessarily happier in
relationships in which their partners tended to experience and
express positive emotions. The gender difference in the partner
effects was statistically significant for satisfaction, A ^ l ) = 4.6,
p < .05, and marginally significant for quality, A^Cl) = 3.6,
p = .07.
Overall, then, the findings show that both the man's and the
woman's Positive Emotionality contributed independently (i.e.,
had additive effects) to the happiness of the woman's relationship;
however, the man's relationship happiness was predicted only by
his own level of Positive Emotionality, in particular his level of
social closeness. Thus, the findings provide at least partial support
for the actor, partner, gender-specificity, and additivity models.
Constraint. The most noteworthy finding for Constraint was
the effect of the man's Constraint on the relationship (see Figure 2,
Panel C). Men high in Constraint were happier in their relation-
ships, whereas women high in Constraint were not happier,
Ay 2 (l) = 7.9, p < .01. The primary scale analyses showed that, in
general, men high in self-control, harm avoidance, and tradition-
alism reported high levels of relationship quality and satisfaction.
In terms of partner effects, there was a weak tendency for the
partners of high Constraint men to have a more positive view of
the relationship; this effect was significant for quality (/3 = .12,
p < .05) but did not attain significance for satisfaction (/3 = .08,
p = .13). Analyses at the primary scale level showed that two
dimensions—self-control and traditionalism—accounted for this
partner effect: Women were happier when their partners were
traditional and had appropriate impulse control. The overall pattern
of findings is consistent with a male dominance model, in which
the man's Constraint drives the relationship experience of both
members of the couple. A test of this form of gender specificity
showed that the two male effects were significantly stronger than
the two female effects, A^2(2) = 8.8, p < .05. Thus, the findings
for Constraint support the actor, partner, and gender-specificity
models; the findings do not support the additivity model.
Searching for Synergy: Interactive Effects of Personality
on Relationship Outcomes
In the previous section, we found that the personality traits of
both partners make unique contributions to relationship outcomes.
However, these additive effects do not demonstrate that the couple
functions as a synergistic system in which the whole (the relation-
ship) is more than the sum of the parts (the two individuals'
personalities). Demonstrating synergy (Model 5) requires evidence
of a multiplicative interaction between the personality character-
istics of the relationship partners.
We first examined interactions involving a single trait. For
example, are couples particularly unhappy when both partners are
high in Negative Emotionality? We used moderated multiple re-
gression to predict each relationship outcome from the man's MPQ
score, the woman's MPQ score, and the product of the standard-
ized MPQ scores (representing the interaction between the man's
and the woman's personality). We conducted these analyses for all
three MPQ superfactors, separately for male and female outcomes
on each relationship variable. None of the 12 resulting analyses
produced a significant interaction effect (all ps > .05).
We also tested for interactions involving multiple traits, for
example, between the woman's Negative Emotionality and the
man's Constraint. An aggressive, stress-reactive woman and an
impulsive man seem like a recipe for an unhappy relationship. To
explore such possibilities, we examined two between-partner in-
teraction terms (man with woman, woman with man) for each of
the three possible trait interactions (Negative Emotionality with
Constraint, Negative Emotionality with Positive Emotionality, and
Positive Emotionality with Constraint), producing six interaction
terms. We repeated this set of analyses for male and female
outcomes. Out of 24 tests for an interaction, all of the effects were
weak in magnitude and none were significant (all ps > .05).5
Overall, the findings do not support the synergy model.
Are Similar Couples Happy Couples?
Is the degree of personality similarity between partners associ-
ated with relationship satisfaction and quality? We calculated a d2
index of personality similarity (which is the sum of the squared
deviations between the two profiles) across all 10 primary scales,
across the 3 superfactors, and across the primary scales defining
each superfactor, and then correlated these 5 profile similarity
indexes with male and female ratings of relationship satisfaction
and quality.
The findings show that men tend to be happier in relationships
when they are similar to their partners (see Table 2). This effect is
due primarily to similarity on the Negative Emotionality scales,
although the correlations for the other two superfactors are in the
same direction. For women, the correlations were weaker and less
consistent, but the one significant effect also pointed toward a
positive relation between similarity and relationship satisfaction.
Discussion
The present study examined 360 couples in established relation-
ships to test how the personality traits of both members of a couple
combine to shape relationship outcomes. Each couple member was
assessed on three broad personality traits (Negative Emotionality,
Positive Emotionality, Constraint) and on 10 specific trait dimen-
sions. In addition, couple members were separately interviewed
about their satisfaction with the relationship and its overall quality.
Which Personality Traits Contribute to a
Happy Relationship?
Low Negative Emotionality was the strongest and most consis-
tent predictor of quality and satisfaction. Both men and women are
happy in a relationship when neither partner tends to experience
and express negative emotions. These effects are consistent with a
recent review of longitudinal predictors of marital quality and
stability, which concluded that Negative Emotionality, or Neurot-
icism, shows stronger effects on marital outcomes than other
personality factors (Karney & Bradbury, 1995; see also Buss,
1991).
The centrality of negative emotions fits with a core finding of
contemporary research on relationship processes: The way in
which negative affect is expressed toward the partner is the crucial
5
We also tested for within-person interactions among the MPQ super-
factors (e.g., man's Negative Emotionality and man's Constraint) but found
no significant effects for either men or women.
 PERSONALITY CORRELATES OF RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION
Table 2
Effects of Partner Similarity on Male and Female Reported Relationship Outcomes
Male outcome
a
Similarity index Quality
10 primary scales .15*
3 superfactors .12*
Negative emotionality .18*
Positive emotionality .06
Constraint .04
Note. N = 336.
a
This index represents the sum of squared discrepancies between the man's and the woman's personality profile.
The index was multiplied by — 1 so that it indicates partner similarity.
*p<.05.
determinant of relationship quality. High Negative Emotionality
individuals are prone to express four behaviors that Gottman
(1994) identified as detrimental to relationships: criticism, con-
tempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. High Negative Emotion-
ality individuals may also be more physiologically reactive and
more likely to escalate negative affect during conflict with their
partners, thereby lowering both couple members' satisfaction (e.g.,
Gottman, Coan, Carrere, & Swanson, 1998).
Positive Emotionality and Constraint also influenced relation-
ship satisfaction and quality. Both men and women are happy in
relationships in which the man experiences and expresses positive
emotions and has the capacity to constrain his impulses. Taken
together, our data suggest that a woman's relationship happiness is
predicted by her partner's level on all three traits—Negative Emo-
tionality, Positive Emotionality, and Constraint—whereas a man's
relationship happiness is predicted by his partner's Negative Emo-
tionality alone.
Why do men seem to be influenced only by their partner's
tendency to be critical and anxious, whereas women are influenced
by the total constellation of personality traits displayed by their
partners? Again research on relationship processes may be infor-
mative. Women are more likely to raise problems and criticisms in
relationships; therefore, the ability of the man to soothe his partner
and "embrace her anger" is crucial (Gottman, 1994). Men high in
Positive Emotionality may be better able to deescalate their part-
ner's negative affect through the use of humor and other behaviors
that defuse conflict. Men high in Positive Emotionality also ex-
press a stronger need for close relationships and may be motivated
to work to preserve harmony when their girlfriend or wife ex-
presses dissatisfaction (Graziano, Jensen-Campbell, & Hair,
1996). Similarly, men high in Constraint may possess the self-
control necessary to avoid impulsively disengaging from problem-
atic interactions. Evolutionary psychology provides another pos-
sible interpretation of our findings. If women use a man's
personality traits as cues of his ability to be a stable and committed
relationship partner who will provide resources for their children
(Buss, 1994), then it makes sense that women are more satisfied
with partners who have the capacity for warm and intimate rela-
tionships (low Negative Emotionality, high social closeness) and
who are good at planning and are persistent and thus likely to be
"good providers" (high self-control).
257
Female outcome
Satisfaction Quality Satisfaction
.12* .01 .08
.10 .07 .00
.13* .00 .11*
.04 .06 .09
.06 .06 -.05
Evaluating Six Models of the Relation Between
Personality and Relationship Outcomes
We found robust support for the actor, partner, and additive
models, some support for the gender-specific and similarity mod-
els, and no support for the synergy model. The actor model
predicts that people's personality traits shape their view of the
relationship (Paths a and d in Figure 1), and the findings suggest
that, although romantic partners are entwined in a relationship with
another person, it is their own personality that drives much of their
subjective experience of that relationship. However, the presence
of partner effects suggests that the link between self-reports of
personality and subjective evaluations of the relationship do not
simply reflect a rose-colored or dark-tinted glasses effect. There
were a number of ways in which the man's personality influenced
his partner's level of happiness (Path b) and, likewise, a few ways
in which the woman's personality influenced her partner's happi-
ness (Path c).
In several cases, we found that both the man's and the woman's
personality characteristics made independent contributions to the
nature of the relationship. These additive effects can be seen as a
special case of a person-environment transaction, in which one's
relationship partner constitutes the environment. There are three
transactional processes by which personality may affect relation-
ship outcomes (Caspi, 1998). Consider the case of Negative Emo-
tionality—why might a person high in Negative Emotionality be
more likely to have an unhappy relationship? First, they may select
partners who are similar to themselves. However, our data showed
little or no assortative mating on personality, and our multiple
regression analyses controlled for any assortative mating that was
present. Thus, it is not simply that high Negative Emotionality
individuals are unhappy because they pair off with similarly ag-
gressive, alienated, or anxious others. Second, people high in
Negative Emotionality may react to and interpret the behaviors of
their partners in a negative light, and thus be primed to perceive
and magnify relationship difficulties (Rusting, 1998). For example,
they may overreact to minor criticism from their partner, believe
they are no longer loved when their partner does not call, or
assume infidelity on the basis of mere flirtation. Third, people high
in Negative Emotionality may evoke behaviors from their partner
that contribute to their own dissatisfaction. For example, an ag-
gressive or alienated man may get the "silent treatment" from his
258 ROBINS, CASPI, AND MOFFITT
partner, and consequently become less satisfied with his relation-
ship. The presence of additive effects underscores the need for
relationship researchers to study both members of a relationship.
We found no support for the synergy model. Relationship re-
searchers often emphasize the need to understand the couple as an
interactive system rather than in terms of each partner's individual
characteristics (e.g., Gottman, 1982). However, our analyses failed
to show any interactive effects between male and female person-
ality traits, despite testing for interactions in multiple ways and
with adequate statistical power (Aiken & West, 1991). Thus, each
partner's personality contributes independently-to relationship out-
comes but not in a synergistic way—a whole relationship is not
greater than the sum of its two parts, at least not when the parts are
each partner's personality traits. This conclusion should be qual-
ified by three observations. First, interactions between couple
members' personality traits may be even more complicated than
those we tested (e.g., the entire configuration of traits of one
partner may interact with the other partner's configuration of
traits). Second, we have used the term synergy to refer to a
multiplicative interaction between the traits of two individuals.
The absence of such synergy does not rule out the existence of
some form of transactional synergy emerging out of microinterac-
tional relationship dynamics (e.g., escalation of negative affect).
Finally, the absence of synergistic effects does not imply that only
one member of the couple matters. On the contrary, our findings
highlight the importance of additive effects in the couple system.
These additive effects constitute a unique form of person-
environment interaction, called additive coaction (Rutter, 1983), in
which both members of a couple jointly and uniquely shape the
relationship.
Limitations
The present study has several limitations. First, it is difficult to
determine whether personality causes relationship outcomes or
relationship experiences cause personality change. The antecedent
nature of some of the data may be informative. When the original
sample members completed the MPQ (3 years before they com-
pleted the relationship measures ) only 15% were already involved
in their current relationship. Thus, for the vast majority, it was not
possible that their personality was altered by their happiness in the
current relationship. Moreover, a recent longitudinal study failed
to find any evidence that relationships change personality (at least
not over an 18 month period), although personality did predict
subsequent relationship outcomes (Asendorpf & Wilpers, 1998).
Second, our sample was comprised almost entirely of young
adults. It is possible that the present findings will not generalize to
older adults or to long-term marital relationships.6 Other research,
however, shows that the MPQ traits are highly stable in adulthood
(McGue, Bacon, & Lykken, 1993) and are thus likely to influence
romantic relationships in later years. Nonetheless, the personality
correlates of relationship outcomes may change developmentally;
for example, older individuals, whose relationships center more on
companionship and childrearing, may derive satisfaction from
partners with different personality traits than those from whom
they derived satisfaction when they were younger.
Third, the findings may appear to some readers to be too weak
to be clinically significant. One consideration is that the effects
were generally additive across partners, so the impact of a person-
ality trait on a relationship represents the summed effect of the
actor and partner effects (e.g., the multiple R predicting female
satisfaction from the man's and the woman's Negative Emotion-
ality was .40). Moreover, relationship outcomes are determined by
a complex set of factors, and we would not expect personality traits
alone to exhaustively account for relationship satisfaction. Finally,
we believe it is of vital significance to explain even a small
percentage of the variance in an almost universally important life
goal—attaining a happy relationship (Roberts & Robins, in press).
Finding a Place for Personality in Relationship Research
Almost two decades ago, Gottman (1982) argued that we should
stop studying the dispositional basis of relationship outcomes and
focus on the processes characterizing couple interactions. His call
to "free ourselves from this emphasis on individual functioning"
(p. 945) was profoundly influential, and the past two decades have
seen an enormous amount of research on microinteractional
processes.
However, the study of relationship processes is not incompatible
with the study of individual differences, and we believe there is
room for better integration of the two approaches. Individuals
create microinteractional processes; these processes do not occur
in a vacuum or arise de novo. People bring histories to relation-
ships, and these histories are captured in part by stable personality
traits. We have proposed several possible links between stable
traits and microinteractional processes. These mediating links need
to be examined more closely in future research. A useful research
design would combine the measurement of personality traits with
the measurement of relationship-specific behaviors and emotions
and test them in a single model. We predict that the personality
effects reported in the present study will be mediated by ongoing
relationship-specific behaviors and emotions.
The study of individual differences is also not incompatible with
the idea that relationship outcomes are a property of the couple. It
may be true that a relationship constitutes a dynamic system and
not simply two distinct individuals, but an important way to
understand the system is to better understand its constituent parts.
Every relationship is made up of two personalities, and both
partners' personality traits jointly and uniquely shape the quality of
their relationship.
6
We tested whether relationship length or status (living vs. not living
together) moderated any of the findings reported in Figure 2. None of the
interaction effects was significant for relationship length and only one
interaction was significant for relationship status (p < .05). This interac-
tion reflected the fact that the man's Positive Emotionality was associated
with the woman's satisfaction when they were living together (/3 = .25) but
not when they were living apart (j3 = .03).
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Received February 10, 1999
Revision received February 15, 2000
Accepted February 18, 2000