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Assortative mating in humans.
Štěrbová, Zuzana ; Weiss, Petr (advisor) ; Lindová, Jitka (referee) ; Špinka, Marek (referee)
Human mate choice is far from random. Assortative mating can be either positive (homogamy), when people prefer and choose partners with self-similar characteristics, or negative (heterogamy, complementarity), when people prefer self-dissimilar partners. Over one hundred years of research, it has been shown that people generally couple based on the principle of homogamy. This thesis seeks to address the following two goals. First, it critically reviews the current state of knowledge in positive assortative mating (in particular, empirical support, factors affecting homogamy, mechanisms of homogamy, relationship and genetic impact of homogamy, and methodological pitfalls of research). This section includes theoretical papers deal with further mechanisms of assortative mating (homogamy, imprinting-like effect, heterogamy, complementarity). Second, the thesis provides further test of assortative mating in 'ideal partners' (preferences) and actual partners, in the context of sex, sexual orientation (heterosexual and non-heterosexual), and population (Brazil and Czech Republic). Results of these studies show that the principle of homogamy is valid irrespective of sex and population. However, they find a stronger tendency for homogamy in actual partners among heterosexuals than in homosexuals, although...
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