Good matches
Job Quality and the Educational Gradient in Entry Into Marriage and Cohabitation
Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett & Matthew Stimpson
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Men’s and women’s economic resources are important determinants of marriage timing. Prior demographic and sociological literature has often measured resources in narrow terms, considering employment and earnings and not more fine-grained measures of job quality. Yet, scholarship on work and inequality focuses squarely on declining job quality and rising precarity in employment and suggests that this transformation may matter for the life course. Addressing the disconnect between these two important areas of research, this study analyzes data on the 1980-1984 U.S. birth cohort from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to examine the relationships between men’s and women’s job quality and their entry into marital or cohabiting unions. We advance existing literature by moving beyond basic measures of employment and earnings and investigating how detailed measures of job quality matter for union formation. We find that men and women in less precarious jobs - both jobs with standard work schedules and those that provide fringe benefits - are more likely to marry. Further, differences in job quality explain a significant portion of the educational gradient in entry into first marriage. However, these dimensions of job quality are not predictive of cohabitation.
Creativity and romantic passion
Kathleen Carswell, Eli Finkel & Madoka Kumashiro
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Romantic passion typically declines over time, but a downward trajectory is not inevitable. Across 3 studies (1 of which encompassed 2 substudies), we investigated whether creativity helps bolster romantic passion in established relationships. Studies 1A and 1B revealed that people with highly creative personalities report not only greater overall passion but also an attenuation in the tendency for passion to decline as relationship duration increases. Studies 2 and 3 explored positive illusions about the partner’s physical attractiveness as a possible mediator of the effect of creativity on passion. Cross-lagged panel analyses in Study 2 indicated that being creative is linked to a tendency to view the partner as especially attractive, even relative to the partner’s own self-assessment. Path analyses in Study 3 provided longitudinal evidence consistent with the hypothesis that positive illusions about the partner’s attractiveness (participant’s assessments, controlling for objective coding of the partner’s attractiveness) mediate the link between creativity and changes in passion over time. Study 3 also provided longitudinal evidence of the buffering effect of creativity on passion trajectories over time, an effect that emerged not only for self-reported passion but also for objectively coded passion during a laboratory-based physical intimacy task 9 months later. A meta-analytic summary across studies revealed a significant overall main effect of creativity on passion, as well as a significant moderation effect of creativity on risks of passion decline (e.g., relationship length).
The Influence of Facial Femininity on Chinese and White UK Women’s Jealousy
Na Lei et al.
Evolutionary Psychological Science, March 2019, Pages 109-112
Abstract:
It is well established that men report greater jealousy when imagining scenarios in which their romantic partner interacts with men displaying masculine physical characteristics. However, few studies have tested for corresponding effects of sexually dimorphic characteristics on women’s jealousy or tested for these effects in non-Western samples. Thus, we investigated the effects of experimentally manipulated sexually dimorphic face-shape cues on Chinese and White UK women’s jealousy perceptions. Chinese and White UK women both reported greater jealousy when imagining scenarios in which their romantic partner interacted with more feminine women. Both groups of women showed large effects of facial femininity on jealousy perceptions for both Chinese and White UK stimuli. Together, these results suggest that sexually dimorphic facial characteristics influence women’s jealousy and that this effect is not unique to women raised in Western cultures.
Age of Menarche, Adolescent Sexual Intercourse and Schooling Attainment of Women
Jian Huang et al.
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use data from the 1970 British Cohort Study to measure the effect of adolescent sexual intercourse on female schooling attainment. We emphasize the appropriate use of menarcheal age as an instrumental variable (IV) for early intercourse. Our analysis suggests that developmental trajectories vary with menarcheal age and, therefore, capturing variations in individual cognitive capacities induced by pubertal timing is crucial for the validity of the IV identification strategy. Our empirical results indicate that adolescent sexuality reduces full‐time education by approximately one year. Given that 37 percent of females in our data exited virginity in adolescence, the aggregate loss of human capital as measured by average years of female schooling could be up to one‐third of a year.