Political Attitude Similarity and Change in Early Romantic Relationships

Abstract

It has been well-documented that people tend to be attracted to others who are similar to them and that people in romantic relationships tend to be similar to their partners on a variety of domains. One area with particularly high levels of similarity is the domain of political attitudes. Although it is known that married and cohabitating couples are highly similar in political domains, little is known about the exact mechanisms that drive that similarity. The present study examined the reciprocal influences of political similarity and relationship quality for people in newly formed, committed, monogamous relationships. Across a variety of measures of perceived and actual similarity, there were no effects of similarity on changes in relationship quality. However, even in newly formed relationships, similarity in political domains was high. This suggests that matching on political similarity may occur before relationship initiation. Implications for relationship research, as well as for measuring political attitudes, are discussed