Value Consensus and Need Complementarity in Mate Selection

For college couples who were seriously considering marriage, measures of need complementarity (Schutz's FIRO scales) and value consensus (Farber's index of consensus) were compared with progress toward permanence over a seven month period. Consensus was found to be significantly related to progress for only the short-term couples, and complementarity was significant for only the long-term couples. These findings are interpreted as indicating that a series of filtering factors operate in mate selection with social status variables (class, religion, etc.) operating early in the relationship, consensus on values somewhat later, and need complementarity still later. The delay in the effectiveness of the complementarity factor is seen as due to stylized boy-girl interaction and unrealistic idealization of the loved one in the early stages of the relationship.