More (or less) about interspouse personality similarity: a sample of incompatible samples

Examined the degree of interspouse similarity in three samples from previous studies. Two of these samples were matched on age, education, and SES. The third sample represented couples who were not matched on these variables. Contrary to prior assumptions, the matched groups differed from each other nearly as much as they did from the unmatched group. This has implications for the ability to generalize from interspousal data even when comparison groups are matched on several traditional variables.