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The present research examined the psychoanalytic theory of mate selection (Freud, 1927) which proposes that people choose romantic partners similar to their oppositesex parents (Epstein & Guttman, 1984). This phenomenon was addressed as both an actual phenomenon that guides partner choice and as a perceived phenomenon regarding people's conceptualizations of their parents and partners. Participants were asked to describe their parents, significant others, and ideal significant others in terms of several personality characteristics. Also, actual parents and partners of subjects described themselves. For four of eight personality variables, subjects' opposite-sex parents scored similarly to their partners. Also, subjects perceived their significant others as similar to their parents across all variables. Relationship satisfaction was significantly related to the degree to which participants perceive similarity between their parents and partners. Implications for understanding how people's parents influence both actual mate selection and romantic partner perception are discussed.
The present research is concerned with the effects that parents have on the partner choice of their children as these offspring mature and engage in intimate relationships. This research is concerned specifically with the notion that our parents provide us with templates for choosing mates in adulthood; in other words, that people tend to seek romantic partners who resemble their parents in meaningful ways. The notion that individuals seek romantic partners reminiscent of their opposite-sex parents specifically has been labeled the "psychoanalytic theory of mate selection" (Epstein & Guttman, 1984) as well as the "template matching hypothesis" (Daly & Wilson, 1990), implying that one's opposite-sex parent is used as a template for determining romantic partner choice. This template matching hypothesis has garnered some empirical support (e.g., Wilson & Barrett, 1987). The current research was designed to elaborate on the empirical findings in this area.
Perhaps the most well-known, and controversial, theoretical tradition pertaining to the template matching hypothesis is Freud's (1927) psychoanalytic theory, which proposes several predictions concerning the role that one's parents play in mate selection during adulthood. With regard to the mate selection process, several current interpretations of Freud's work (e.g., Daly & Wilson, 1990; Epstein & Guttman, 1984) suggest that he explicitly proposed the template matching hypothesis when describing romantic partner choice. Presumably, according to psychoanalytic theory, early unconscious sexual interest in one's opposite-sex parent should...