Abstrakt
Studies testing discrepancy between ideal and actual partner are usually based on reports of the partnered participants. However, this approach was criticized as the evaluation of ideal partner preferences might be affected by characteristics of the current partner.
Thus, in our study, we compared ideal partner preferences between single and coupled individuals. In total, we collected data from 374 participants who were currently in a romantic relationship and 1215 participants who were not.
Participants completed an online questionnaires asking about ideal partner preferences. The set of 16 individual characteristics were clustered into 4 categories: (i) Status/resources, (ii) Attractiveness, (iii) Warmth/trustworthiness and (iv) Vitality.
These categories were compared between single and coupled individuals separately for each sex by using two-sample t-test. We found no significant differences between the ratings of single and coupled participants in any of the four categories in men and women alike.
Our results show that current partner may have limited impact on ideal partner preferences and thus support the validity of the cross-sectional studies on discrepancy between ideal and actual partner.