Assortative mating in monozygotic twins

This study investigated assortative mating in a series of monozygotic twins in terms of anthropometric variables. Initially the twins were analyzed independent of each other, and the results showed fairly clear homogamy among female MZ twins and their spouses, after correcting for age. Further, when stature was partialled out, several anthropometric measures remained significantly correlated. The results for male MZ twins and their spouses were not nearly so clear-cut. A second analysis treated the co-twins together, and once again, the female MZ sets tended to show assortative mate choice for stature while the male MZ twins/spouses were not significantly correlated. A follow-up analysis investigated whether husbands of the female twins were correlated to each other, and negative results were found for all of the 46 anthropometric variables. An apparent contradiction was resolved in the case of stature by regressing spouse stature against that of the co-twins. It was found that although each of the twins was assortatively mating, one member of the twin set consistently married a taller husband, but the difference was not constant. This had the effect of producing divergent regression lines.