assortative mating
Summary
Assortative mating is non-random partner choice in which people pair with others who resemble them, such as in education, age, ethnicity, religion, or values. The testable point: similarity tends to predict attraction and partnering, not "opposites attract."
Detail
Meaning: Assortative mating, also called homogamy, is the pattern in which people pair with partners who resemble them in traits such as education, social class, age, ethnicity, religion, and values. Contributing forces include the similarity-attraction effect, propinquity (people meet others who live, study, or work nearby, often in settings segregated by class or background), and social norms. Pairing of dissimilar partners is called disassortative mating.
On the MCAT: A passage may report a correlation between spouses' education or income, or a study in which people rate similar strangers as more appealing. Predict that similarity raises attraction and partnering. In sociology, link it to social stratification: partnering within one's class helps carry advantages across generations. In biology, the same term means non-random mating, which shifts genotype frequencies (more homozygotes for the trait) without directly changing allele frequencies, so Hardy-Weinberg conditions are not met.
Common confusion: Students choose "opposites attract" because it sounds familiar, but the research the exam uses favors similarity. Also, assortative mating is a pattern of individual choices, whereas endogamy is a social norm requiring marriage within a group.
Sources
- Social Psychology
- Psychology
Written for the MCAT and checked before it was published. For study reference only. Spotted an error? Let us know.