As per new research, scientists found substantial evidence of assortative mating amongst people and engaging in a romantic relationship with the person who tends to depict similar characteristics to oneself.
It has been quite rightly quoted that ‘Birds of a feather flock together’ and is universally applicable to every living being on this planet brimming with emotions and feelings for a relationship. In one such research, scientists have found to the conclusion that narcissistic men and women tend to more likely be in a romantic relationship with each other rather than preferring anyone who might not share similar characteristics.
We all are aware that narcissist people are those suffering from personality disorder who have an excessively inordinate sense of their importance along with being in deep need of excessive admiration and attention. This often led such people into troubled relationships. That’s why a research pertaining to the relationship preferences of narcissists was conducted by psychologists which indeed got published in journal for Personality and Individual differences.
According to the research, scientists found substantial evidence of assortative mating amongst the people upon whom research was conducted. Assortative mating is a tendency to engage in romantic relationship with the person who tends to depict similar characteristics to oneself.
Further, the research was conducted by the University of Warsaw in Poland where 150 Polish heterosexual couples including 32 percent of married couples were researched upon through several questionnaires. Quite interestingly, one of the crucial observations that have come out of the research is that people who had a higher score on the narcissism metre generally prefer people who also have a higher score in the narcissism test for romantic relationships. Similarly, those with a considerably low score on narcissistic metre did pose a tendency to indulge in a relationship with those people who also have low scores when it comes to narcissist characteristics.
Researchers have further claimed that this data was largely substantiated by an earlier set of data that they had accumulated on the basis of research. Psychologists went to claim that narcissists will look for such partners who are quite similar to them, this indeed points out their self-oriented nature rather than being concerned for any other.
As far as research methodology is considered, researchers asked 150 couples to complete a 34-item questionnaire measuring the scale of their grandiose narcissism. Grandiose narcissism often deals with tendency of expressing interpersonal dominance where people might excessively over-estimate their skills and importance while posing inordinate self-esteem.
Moreover, the researchers have found out that those couples with narcissistic traits did have a similar score pertaining to their levels of narcissism. Other than that, couples were also asked to give an intelligence test consisting 36 questions to measure their level of intelligence. Following that test, psychologists have noted five crucial observations pertaining to intelligence characteristic of narcissists.
*Narcissist women tends to prefer men who they think to be intelligent. The researchers have found that women value more to an intelligent man than to a narcissist man. The reason for this is that men generally tend to choose partner on the basis of appearance rather than intelligence.
*Females narcissists scored higher in intelligence test than the males narcissists. This in fact is also applicable to non-narcissist females when compared with narcissist females who tends to have higher level of intelligence.
*On the other hand, men perceived narcissistic women to be intelligent. This further substantiate the fact that women scored higher on intelligence test.
*Narcissists highly overestimated their sense of intelligence. As expected, narcissists having grandiose narcissism often tend to think highly of themselves even though their intelligence tests didn’t show any veritable evidence of them being intellectual highbrows.
*Narcissism also does not lead to exceptionally successful relationships among narcissistic couples. They were more or less facing the same set of problems as faced by non-narcissistic couples.