“People who identify very strongly one way or another, they’re adamant that they would never date somebody who just doesn’t have the same values,” says Toni Coleman, a dating counselor in McLean, Va. “They would just clash all the time.”
For most people, it’s not that partisan loyalty is all that meaningful. It’s more that firmly-held positions on issues — particularly social issues such as abortion and gay marriage — are wrapped up tight with their overall worldviews, says Peter Hatemi, a political scientist at Penn State University.
“What tends to happen is people who are politically dissimilar, they just tend not to stay together long enough to get married and have kids,” Hatemi says.
The word “tend” is key. There are lots of couples who hold opposing political positions who otherwise . Others, who don’t have terribly strong feelings one way or another, are willing to go along with their spouse’s views in order to get along.
But indicate that on average, political and social attitudes are as strong a predictor of whether two people will get together and stay together as religion or drinking habits, and a stronger predictor than things like personality types.
Political preferences seem to come packaged with a whole set of other kinds of tastes, with liberals and conservatives having separate preferences when it comes to things such as humor, food and even whether they want poetry to rhyme, according to John Hibbing, coauthor of the forthcoming book Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives and the Biology of Political Difference.
“It’s not like people sit down and give their mate a political quiz,” he says. “It oozes out as part of this entire life package. If you’re a liberal on social issues, you’re very likely to choose a liberal on social issues as your mate.”
via For Democrats And Republicans, It’s Happily (N)ever After : It’s All Politics : NPR.
Comments ( 0 )