Abstract
From the stimulus-value-role theory of marital choice, several hypotheses were derived relating to the relationship of person perception, sex drive, and marital choice. Subjects were two populations of premarital college couples who filled out questionnaires relating to sex drive and took two personality tests from different “perceptual sets.” It was predicted that couples in which the man had a high sex drive would show less perceptual compatibility, less accuracy in predicting the partner's responses, and less courtship progress than male-low-drive couples. No difference in perceived compatibility was predicted between highand low-drive women, but high-drive women were predicted to make better courtship progress. Last, discrepancies between members of a couple for sex drive were predicted to be associated with poor perceived compatibility and courtship progress. The hypotheses relating to male and female sex drive were generally supported, but those relating to couple discrepancy were only slightly supported.
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Murstein, B.I. Sex drive, person perception, and marital choice. Arch Sex Behav 3, 331–348 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01636439
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01636439