A new look at similarity and attraction in marriage: Similarities in social‐cognitive and communication skills as predictors of attraction and satisfaction

Abstract

Most research on the relationship between similarity and attraction has been informed by Byrne's (1971) effectance‐arousal model. This model maintains that similarities promote attraction because the discovery of similarities, particularly attitudinal similarities, is reinforcing. The current paper offers an alternative account of the similarity/attraction relationship distinct from the effectance‐arousal model both in the similarities it views as important and in the mechanism by which similarities influence attraction. Specifically, we propose that similarities in social‐cognitive and communication skills promote attraction by fostering enjoyable interactions. Aspects of this model are tested in a study comparing similarities in the social skills of married couples. Sixty couples completed a task yielding measures of three communication skills; the participants also completed questionnaires providing assessments of interpersonal cognitive complexity, marital adjustment, and liking for one's spouse. The social skill levels of spouses were positively associated at moderate to strong magnitudes; further, married couples were more similar in levels of social skills than randomly generated nominal couples. Couples in which both partners had low levels of social skills were no less satisfied with their marriages or happy with their spouses than couples in which both partners had high levels of social skills. Regression analyses indicated that the degree of similarity in couples’ social skills generally did not vary as a function of length of marriage. Finally, although distressed married couples exhibited weaker similarities in social skills than nondistressed couples, low power prevented the magnitudes of these differences from reaching conventional levels of statistical significance. Results of the study are discussed in terms of their implications for the alternative model of the similarity/attraction relationship.