Person. indtvtd. Dig. Vol. 9, No. 4. pp. 763-770, 1988 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

0191-8869188 53.00 + 0.00 Copyright Q 1988 Perpmon Press plc

SPOUSE SIMILARITIES IN PERSONALITY TRAITS FOR INTRA- AND INTERETHNIC MARRIAGES IN ISRAEL

RUTH GUTTMAN,‘~ ADA ZOHAR,’ LEE WILLERMAN~ and IRAH KAHNEMAN* ‘Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905, Israel, me Israel Institute of Applied Social Research, Jerusalem and )Department of Psychology, University of Texas at

Austin, Texas, U.S.A.

(Received 3 August 1987)

Summary-An abbreviated version of the Comrey Personality Scales (CPS) was administered to 220 Israeli couples, divided ethnically into cndogamous Western, endogamous Eastern, and cross-ethnic Eastern x Western background. Two hypotheses were examined: (1) that cross-ethnic couples would show greater similarity in some personality traits than intra-ethnic marriages, and (2) that females and males married cross-ethnically would differ from same-sex, same-ethnicity individuals married within their own ethnic group in certain background and personality characteristics. It was found that cross-ethnic couples had, indeed, higher intra-couple correlations for Empathy than endogamous couples. Western women and Eastern men in interethnic marriages had higher mean scores for Activity and lower means for Conformity than those of same sex and ethnicity in endogamous marriages. Intermarrying Western wives were more extraverted while intermarrying Eastern men were more introverted. On the whole, interethnic marriages were found to be similar to Western marriages in educational level and several attributes of Western lifestyle.

INTRODUCTION

Assortative mating, or homogamy, refers to the tendency of people to marry spouses who resemble them. Similarity between marriage partners has been found for physical characteristics, age, religious affiliation, ethnic origin, socio-economic status, educational level, intellectual and cognitive variables, and personality traits. Data on assortative mating have been summarized by Vandenberg (1972), Jensen (1978) and Epstein and Guttman (1984).

The largest amount of research on behavioral variables has dealt with spouse similarities for intelligence and abilities, while homogamy for personality characteristics has received less attention (Epstein and Guttman, 1984, Tables 2 and 3 and pp. 251-253). Positive, but low, between-mate correlations are generally found for personality attributes obtained from self-administered inven- tories or checklists (Price and Vandenberg, 1980; Ahem, Cole, Johnson and Wong 1981, 1982; Buss, 1984a,b).

Males and females usually marry within their own racial or ethnic group. Those who marry partners outside their own group are a minority, and the question arises whether those who marry interethnically differ in some respects from those who marry within their ethnic origin group. The largest set of cross-cultural data on homogamy comes from the Hawaii Family Study on Cognition (HFSC). In the Hawaii study, adjective checklist scores were obtained from 117 couples who had married either within their own group. (Caucasian, Chinese, Japanese or Hawaiian ancestry) or were married cross-ethnically. Ahem et al. (1981) found that females who married across ethnic boundaries generally scored higher in the dominance domain of personality than did females who married within their own ethnic group. Spouse correlations were generally positive but low and did not differ between endogamous and heterogamous couples.

The primary purpose of the present study was to assess spouse similarity on 7 classes of items of the Comrey Personality Scales (CPS) in an urban Israeli sample of 220 couples whose partners were of either homogeneous or of heterogeneous background with regard to their ethnic origin, and to compare wives and husbands from these marriages for a variety of personality traits.

Israel is an immigrant society, having Jewish residents from about 60 different countries and several continents. Some of the groups, i.e. Yemenites and Jews from Cochin (India), had lived in their countries of origin in comparative isolation for centuries. Recent immigrants to Israel arrived in waves from Europe immediately following World War II, and-in the early 1950’s_from Middle Eastern and North African countries. Although all of the groups have a

763

764 RUTH GLTTMAN ef al.

common religion, they differed at the time of arrival in many respects: language, dress, farnil>- structure, socialization pattern, and cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. The immigrants who came from European-American countries were from fairly well-educated backgrounds, while immigrants from Asian-African countries had, on the whole, a poor secular education.

Educational attainment after immigration has increased steadily for all groups, but significant differences still remain between the two major ethnocultural groups. This is also true for most status variables, such as income and occupational prestige (Yogev and Jamshi, 1983; Semyonov and Kraus, 1983).

Friedlander and Goldscheider (1984) have described changes which have occurred in socio- demographic characteristics in Israel between 1942 and 1982. Like most demographers and social anthropologists, they divide the subpopulations into groups of individuals born either in Europe-America, or in Afro-Asian countries; or persons born in Israel to parents who immigrated from the above continents. This definition of ethnicity is based on a geographic-cultural background definition and not on historical origins of specific communities (Yemen, Kurdistan. Cochin, etc.), as reported in various genetic studies of Jewish subpopulations (Goldschmidt, 1962: Guttman, Guttman and Rosensweig, 1967; Bonn&Tamir, Karlin and Kenett 1979). Although the division into two major groups-Afro-Asian (often called “Oriental”) and European-American (“Ashkenazi”)--is an oversimplification which ignores the fact that both groups consist of subcommunities, this classification has been shown to organize meaningfully some of the complex ethnic relationships (Peres, 1976) and thus is appropriate for this study.

The rate of Ashkenaziariental marriages has risen sharply, from about 10% of all marriages in the mid-1950s to over 20% in the last decade. The structure of intermarriages has changed as well. In the 1950s about two-thirds of interethnic marriages were between Oriental females and Ashkenazi males. During recent years, marriages in both directions are of about equal number (Peres and Schrift, 1978).

The major purpose of the present study was to determine whether heterogamous couples are more similar than endogamous marriages on personality characteristics asscored by the CPS and whether individuals who married across ethnic boundaries differ from those married within their own ethnic origin group.

Sample METHOD

A sample of couples married between 0 and 25 years was obtained by using the “Continuing Survey” run for the past 20 years by the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research in cooperation with the Hebrew University Communications Institute. The “Continuing Survey” interviews at each field survey a roster sample of Jewish urban adults aged 21 + . The population roster is obtained by the Institute from the Ministry of Interior’s population register. To the standard background questionnaire we added 4 questions: (1) if married-length or marriage; (2) subject’s country of birth; and (3), (4) each of the subject’s parents’ country of birth.

A list of 830 couples was obtained of which 337 couples were personally interviewed by us. Ten couples had to be excluded because of incomplete information on ethnicity.

An exact definition of ethnicity by country of birth of the subject turned out to be impossible, as can be seen from Table 1. Fifty-four percent of the subjects are Israeli born, while the majority of subject’s parents were born in either Western (groups 2,3,4,5) or Eastern (groups 6 and 7) countries.

The ethnic definition of the present study is as follows:

IVesfern: The subject or both parents were born in a Western country (Table 1: countries 2,3,4,5). Eastern: The subject or both parents were born in an Eastern country (Table 1: groups 6 and 7). Mixed: The subject was born in Israel, to parents who were some combination of West and East.

This formulation differs from the usual definition of ethnic origin as given by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics and used by most researchers. Ethnicity between 1952 and 1965 was usually determined by the birthplace only of the subject. This was possible since the majority of subjects

Spouse similarities for intra- and interethnic marriages 765

Table I. Countries of birth of subjects. their fathers and mothers

Subjects Fathers Mothers Country of birth Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent

I. Israel 361 (54) (10) (11) 2. Eastern Europe III (16) 2: (37) 3. Western Europe 30

(39) 2: (8) (9)

4. English speaking country 14 (4) ;; (2) (2)

5. South America I5 (2) 5 (2) 1; (1) (1)

6. Asia Iraq Iran Yemen 1 84 (13) 164 (25) 158 (24) Kurdistan etc. J

7. North Africa Morocco TUtiS 55 (8) 100 (15) 105 (16) Libya Algeria

8. Other 4 9 4

until then were born outside Israel. Since 1965, origin is generally defined by the subject’s father’s continent of birth. In our study, for a subject who was Israeli born, we have defined ethnicity according to the country of origin of both parents. The rationale for requiring both parents was the assumption that the mother was certainly no less important than the father for providing an ethnically influenced cultural background and home environment.

Table 2 shows the distribution of 327 couples in the study for whom we had full ethnic background information. The 105 couples which did not fit our requirement of intra- and interethnic marriage, have been omitted from the analysis.

The questionnaire

A first version of the questionnaire was administered to 20 professional couples in Jerusalem. These couples were asked to write us their comments, which enabled us to omit several questions, add others and rephrase some. The final questionnaire consisted of 117 items. These include background questions: age, years of marriage, country of origin of self and of parents, years of education, occupation, number of children. There were 17 items on leisure-time preferences, 5 items on sexual satisfaction, 6 items on marital satisfaction, a battery of items on religious and political attitudes, 15 items from the Raven Progressive Matrices, and 57 selected items from the Comrey Personality Scales (CPS).

The CPS was chosen for several reasons. It has been constructed to assess individual variation in the normal range on each of 8 classes of bipolar personality items. Furthermore, 7 of the 8 classes were sufficiently well defined to enable selection of 57 individual items to represent each of them. A further advantage of the CPS is that has already been used in previous studies on assortative mating (Price and Vandenberg, 1980; Guttman and Zohar, 1987). The selected items were translated into Hebrew and were pretested on 20 couples.

Table 2. Structure of sample by eth- nicity

Ethnicity of Wife Husband

Number of COUDkS

W’ W 93 W E 37 El W 25 E E 67

Mixed’ 10s

Total 327

‘Western (Ashkcnazi). ‘Eastern (Oriental). ‘Mixed (subject Israel born and parents

of various combinations).

766 Rum GUTTMAS er al.

Procedure

Interviewers specially trained for this project were employed in each of three major cities (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa). Each couple received a letter explaining the purpose of the research and-a week later-a telephone call from the interviewer. If they agreed to participate, a date was set for the interview, usually in the evening when both husband and wife were at home.

Forty percent of the couples approached agreed to be interviewed. The majority of the refusals were probably due to reluctance of personal exposure of feeling of insecurity about the marriage. It should be noted that we had emphasized, both in the letter and by the interviewer on the phone, that the interviews would remain anonymous, and that the completed questionnaires would be returned to the Institute in an envelope sealed in the presence of the couple without their names on it. Nevertheless, the sample no doubt is biased toward “happy and/or stable” couples.

At the agreed time, the interviewer brought two questionnaires, one for the husband and one for the wife, which were identical in everything (content, form, etc.) but differed in the grammatical Hebrew gender, as required. These questionnaires were given to the subjects for self-administration. According to the instructions given by the interviewer, no exchange of opinions was allowed between the spouses concerning the questions, either when writing down the answers, or at any time prior to the interviewer’s departure, thus ensuring that each spouse could feel free to answer without fearing the other’s reaction, and that the research would not create tension between the two.

The questionnaire is a structured one, and required only circling the most appropriate answer to each item. The interviewer was instructed to answer clarification questions and to safeguard the couples from unnecessary distractions (by taking the telephone calls, amusing the children, etc.). There was no time limit for filling out the questionnaire, except for the 15 items of the Raven Test. for which only 10 min were allowed.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Background variables of couples

Age, education and number of children are given in Table 3. In our sample the youngest couples are those of Western wives married to Eastern husbands, the oldest are the intra-Western marriages. Data for educational level show that endogamous Eastern couples are the least educated, as are their parents, most of whom immigrated from Asian-African countries (as was shown in Table 1). Educational attainment of WE and EW marriages is very similar to endogamous Western and both sexes have very similar amounts of schooling in all marriage combinations. This is reflected in spouse correlations of about 0.75 for years of schooling.

Educational level is not the only variable in which cross-ethnic marriages behave like those of Westerners. W x E and E x W couples were found to be almost exactly like the intra-Western (and unlike intra-Eastern) marriages in their leisure activities, particularly with regard to reading books, attending lectures, concerts and theater performances, and in listening to classical music. The cross-ethnic couples in our study conform to the Western culture in Israel, which is dominant in almost all aspects of social stratification and life style (Semyonov and Kraus, 1983; Yogev and Jamshy, 1983). However, all marriage combinations were similar in their replies to questions on reasons for marriage, mutual agreement on various activities, sexual relations, many attitudinal questions, and marital satisfaction.

Table 3. Mean ages and educational levels of couples by ethnic structure

Educational level’ Ethnic combination Mid (wife x husband) Age Wives Husbands couples Fathers Mothers

Ww 40.91 5.69 6.32 6.10 4.61 4.10 WE 32.25 6.21 5.68 5.94 4.00 3.55 EW 36.20 5.72 5.60 5.69 3.73 3.50 EE 35.33 4.21 4.16 4.20 2.78 2.14

‘I = No schooling, 2 = partial elementary. 3 = full elementary, 4. partial highschool, 5 = full highschool, 6 + 7 = partial university, 8 = full university (at least BA or BS).

Spouse similarities for intra- and interethnic marriages 767

Table 4. Spouse correlations’ for Comrey personality classes

Marriage combination (Wife x Husband)

Ww EE WE EW Lower bound’ Comrey class’ N = 93 N = 67 N = 34 N = 28 to reliability

Defensiveness vs trust (T) 0.13 0.21 0.12 0.28 0.53 Lack of compulsion vs order (0) - 0.07 - 0.02 0.05 0.22 0.68 Rebelliousness vs social conformity (C) 0.35 0.1s 0.26 - 0.06 0.47 Lack of VI activity (A) energy 0.13 0.17 0.25 0.01 0.78 Neuroticism vs emotional stability (S) 0.16 0.05 -0.17 0.12 0.84 Introversion vs Extraversion (E) 0.03 0.09 0.09 - 0.04 0.85 Egocentrism vs empathy (P) 0.14 0.13 0.50 0.37 0.60

‘All coefficients are MONCO, p’ (Guttman, 1986) except for Pearson I in the Hawaii study. *Selected items. ‘Guttman’s Lambda 2 for total sample (Guttman, 1945). ‘Ahem et al. (1981).

Total kidi Hawaii %Ullple study’

N=327 N=117

0.24 0.24 0.17 0.18 0.38 0.33 0.16 0.25 0.13 0.19 0.06 0.06 0.24 0.10

Marital satisfaction was assessed by 6 rank scores: from 1 = “satisfied to a great extent” to 6 = “not satisfied at all”. The mean satisfaction score for all couples was 1.9 f 0.9, with little variation among the groups. We are thus dealing with a highly satisfied group of couples who are probably unrepresentative of the total population. Undoubtedly many problematic couples opted out from participation in the study. High satisfaction scores were also obtained in a study on assortative mating in a sample of professional couples in Jerusalem (Guttman and Zohar, 1987).

The following discussion will concern itself primarily with spouse similarities in the classes of items of the Comrey Personality Scales (CPS), and individual and group differences with respect to these classes.

Spouse-similarities for Comrey classes of items

Husband: wife correlations for 7 Comrey classes, each represented by several items, are given in Table 4 for each ethnic combination. The spouse correlations for the total sample, as well as for the subsamples consisting of couples of different ethnic combinations, are either zero or positive. In that they resemble the low but consistently positive correlations for personality traits reported

by Buss (1984b) from three different data sources.* Comparing the correlations in the total Israeli sample with the data given for the w/role Comrey

battery in the Hawaii study by Ahem et al. (1981), we find that our results match the Hawaiian data to a remarkable degree, although the specific ethnic groups in the two studies are very different.

In our total sample of 327 couples the highest spouse correlations are for Comrey’s Conformity, Trust and Empathy. These three domains are all concerned with relations of self to others. Assortative mating for “self-other centeredness” was previously found by Guttman and Zohar (1987) in a group of young married professional couples in Jerusalem. Of particular interest are the high spouse correlations for “Egocentrism vs Empathy” among both types of cross-ethnic couples. According to Comrey (1970), individuals who score high on empathy “described themselves as sympathetic, helpful, generous, unselfish. . . ” The items in our questionnaire were as follows:

-1 am very kindhearted. -I would hate to make a loan to a poor family I didn’t know very well. -It take care of myself before I think about other people’s needs. -1 would like to devote my life to the service of others. -If someone is looking for help I try to make myself scarce. -1 am rather insensitive to the difficulties that other people are having. -1 try to get out of helping other people if I can. -1 like to look after the welfare of the ones I love before I worry about myself.

*It should be noted that the correlations in the Israeli study are “Coefficients of weak monotonicity”. MONCO or pz (Guttman, 1986) which do not assume strict linearity as does the Pearson r. p* is never less than Pearson r in absolute value.

768 RUTH GUTTMAN er al.

Table 5. Between swuse correlations for education

Education of

Ethnic structure Subject’s Subject’s Subject’s of couple own father mother

WW 0.71 0.47 0.59 EE 0.78 0.61 0.26 WE+EW 0.75 0.01 0.04

Similarity with regard to concern for relations with others may be of special importance in cross-ethnic marriages. This similarity may also be one of the factors related to the somewhat higher stability of cross-ethnic families reported by Peres and Katz (1981). According to the 1976 and 1977 Statistical Abstract of Israel, cross-ethnic marriages during that period had propor- tionately fewer divorces than did homogenous non-European families and were much more stable than European marriages. While similarity of couples in empathy does not say anything about whether individual couples are high or low in this respect, it strongly indicates that there is a certain amount of mate selection for the elements involved in concern for others. This assumption is reinforced by lack of differences among mean empathy scores of all four groups, to be shown in Table 6.

Since persons marrying across ethnic lines usually do not follow the more common pattern of marrying within their own socio-economic class of culture (Epstein and Guttman 1984, p.260), it may be assumed that mixed couples are assorting for other types of traits. Peres and Katz (1981) suggest that, in Israel, mixed couples may be less divergent than endogamous marriages in such attributes as education and personality traits. Table 5 shows, however, that spouse correlations for education in our study are almost identical in the four marriage combinations, and that intermarriages differ from endogamous marriage particularly with regard to parents’ education. In endogamous couples there are positive correlations in fathers’ and mothers’ educational level, while in the interethnic marriages there is no similarity whatsoever in parents’ educational background. Peres and Schrift (1978) have pointed out that educational background of the home is only one of a number of social and cultural factors in which partners in intermarriage usually differ.

Personality attributes of males and females marrying within or across own ethnic group

The second question asked in this research was whether males and females marrying within their own ethnic group differ from those marrying across on any personality attributes studied by the Comrey battery. For this purpose, means of Comrey scores of females and males-each from different marriage combinations-were compared. To assess the effectiveness of differences in means of intra-and intermarried females and males respectively, a Coefficient of Discrimination, “DISCO” 01’) was calculated for each of the Comrey scores.

The Coejicient of Discrimination, ,u, (DISCO), has been developed by Guttman (198 1) to assess the efficacy of differences among means in terms of overlap of the respective distributions. DISCO equals zero if all the distributions overlap in such a way as to have the same means; and it equals 1 if there is no overlap whatsoever between the distributions: there is perfect discrimination among the groups. Intermediate values between 0 and 1 indicate intermediate amounts of overlap. Sample efficacy coefficients, like DISCO and Pearson’s Eta, are consistent estimates of population efficacy coefficients for differences, while this is not the case for F or t or other inferential statistics. (See Carver, 1978; Cowger, 1984; Guttman, 1981, 1985.) Empirical examples of DISCO can be found in Guttman and Zohar (1987).

Table 6 presents mean Comrey scores of females and of males of Western or Eastern background married to spouses of the same or of different ethnicity. DISCO and eta values are given for comparison between same-sex, same-ethnicity men and women in intra- vs interethnic marriages.

The major points emerging from Table 6 are: (1) there are virtually no differences in means of Empathy scores between either men or women in endogamous vs cross-ethnic marriages. Thus we can rule out group differences as an alternative explanation for the spouse similarity in Empathy in cross-ethnic marriages. (2) Western intermarrying females are more extraverted than Western females in endogamous marriages, while Eastern intermarrying males have lower mean extra- version scores (higher introversion) than endogamous Eastern males. Thus in WE couples women

Spouse similarities for intra- and interethnic marriages 769

Table 6. Comparison of Comrey class means for females (F) and Males (M) married intn- or interethnically

Western Eastern

Comrey class Sex Intra Inter DISCO Eta Intra Inter DISCO Eta

Defensiveness vs trust (T) F 24.03 25.97 0.30 0.16 24.15 23.97 0.04 0.02 -- M 24.21 24.75 0.08 0.04 23.50 22.94 0.16 0.08

Lack of compulsion vs order (0) F 22.91 23.58 0.11 0.05 22.19 22.97 0.12 0.06 M 21.79 23.38 0.28 0.14 22.40 25.94 0.57 0.32

Rebelliousness VI social conformity (C) F 22.77 24.03 0.30 0.16 20.89 21.43 0.15 0.07 M 2203 22.83 0.16 0.08 19.73 21.00 0.3 I 0.17

Lack of vs activity (A) energy F 23.21 20.39 0.41 0.22 22.50 23.28 0.17 0.08 M 20.06 20.50 0.08 0.04 21.94 20.38 0.25 0.17

Neuroticism YS emotional stability (S) F 21.18 21.16 0.00 0.00 24.26 20.93 0.48 0.27 M 20.64 20.75 0.02 0.01 21.70 20.30 0.22 0.12

Introversion vs Extraversion (E) F 24.45 22.75 0.46 0.23 24.95 24.20 0.19 0.10 M 24.47 25.21 0.19 0.10 23.63 24.76

Egocentrism 0.32 0.17

vs empathy (P) F 22.59 22.60 0.00 0.00 21.39 21.00 0.08 0.04 M 23.91 23.34 0.11 0.05 21.80 22.50 0.20 0.10

are more extraverted than men. However, this does not mean complementarity in these marriages Since spouse correlation on intro/extraversion was found to be zero (Table 4). (3) In WE madages, Westem females and Eastern males are both more rebellious (less conforming) and more active than endogamic Western women and Eastern men.

In summary, Western intermarrying women, are as a group, more extraverted, more active and much less conforming than Western females married within their own ethnic group. Eastern intermarried men are more introverted, but also more active and less conforming than Eastern endogamous husbands. The WE combination differs from the EW in that Eastern women marrying Western males show no systematic differences from Eastern endogamous females, neither do Western males married to spouses of Eastern background differ from the Eastern men married to Eastern women.

It is difficult to interpret these findings-in particular the differences in WE vs EW marriages-on the basis of the data obtained in the present study. However, one might speculate that in the EW couples the Eastern women, who are well educated, are actually Western in their outlook (Rosen, 1982) and the Western intermarrying men, being of the dominant culture, are not contravening any social norms. In WE marriages, on the other hand, the women may expect difficulty in adjusting to the husband’s culture (as has been shown by Rosen, 1982), while the Eastern man marrying into the dominant culture may be concerned with his standing as a husband in the Western family. Of special relevance is the finding that both partners in WE marriages are less conforming.

Comrey (1970) defines individuals who are high on “Social conformity” as accepting society as it is, respecting the law, seeking approval of society and resenting non-conformity in others. The items presented to our subjects were the following:

-If the laws of society are unjust they should be disobeyed. -The laws governing the people of this country are sound and need only minor changes if at all. -1 ignore what my neighbors might think of me. -Young people should be more willing than they are to do what their elders tell them to do. -1 am critical of the way our present society is organized. -It is important for me to be accepted in my community. -1 believe the society we live in is pretty good the way it is.

On the basis of their evaluations, Western women who are married across ethnic group were the least conforming of all spouses. These findings show some resemblance to the Ahem et al. (1981) Hawaiian data in which females who married across ethnic group scored higher in the area of dominance than did females who married within their own group.

In Israel, in spite of their numerical preponderance, Orientals are still considered the “subordi- nate” and Westerners the “dominant’* group (Smooha and Peres, 1975; Yinon, 1975; Rosen, 1982). Thus, Western women marrying Eastern men-in spite of the equal education and Western life style of their spouses-married into families whose educational levels and socio-economic status were usually lower than their own family’s and required great adaptability on the wife’s part and

770 RL?H GLEN ef al.

a disregard of the social expectations of marrying into a similar or higher SES. In an interview study of 30 interethnic couples, Rosen (1982) found that the single trait common to all Oriental spouses was a “perceived distance from their Oriental culture”. Intermarriage appeared to be more the result of a Western lifestyle than its cause; as in our study, the Oriental partners belonged to an educated group. Rosen found that many of the Ashkenazi (Western) females had difficulty in the husband’s parents’ home-particularly the in-laws’ attitudes toward the wife’s role in the family. Thus, Western women marrying Eastern males generally marry into a strong cultural environment, different from their own experience, while an Eastern woman marrying a Western mate usually not only is familiar with Western culture but considers herself part of it.

The present research has provided support for both hypotheses with regard to inter- vs intraethnic similarities and differences in attributes of personality. Further research is needed to assess the underlying causes for these phenomena.

,-tcknowledgemenr-This study was supported by Grant NO. 2710/82 from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.

REFERENCES

Ahem F. M., Cole R. E., Johnson R. C. and Wong B. (1981) Personality attributes of males and females marrying within and across racial/ethnic groups. Be-kc. Gener. 11, 181-194.

Ahem F. M., Johnson R. C., Wilson J. R., McCleam G. E. and Vandenberg S. G. (1982) Family resemblances in personality. Behau. Gener. 12, 261-280.

Bonne-Tamir B., Karlin S. and Kenett R. (1979) Analysis of genetic data on Jewish populations. I. Historical background, demographic features, and genetic markers. Am. /. Hum. Genet. 31, 324-340.

BUSS D. M . (1984a) Toward a psychology of person-environment (PE) correlation: the role of spouse selection. J. Person. sot. Psychol. 47, 361-377.

Buss D. M. (1984b) Marital assortment for personality dispositions: assessment with three data sources. Behau. Gener. 14, 111-123.

Carver R. P. (1978) The case against statistical significance testing. Harvard Educ. Rev. 48, 378-399. Comrey A. L. (1970) Manual for Comrey Personality Scales. Educational and Industrial Testing Service, San Diego, CA. Cowger Ch. D (1984) Statistical significance tests: Scientific ritualism or scientific method? Social Seruice Reuiew pp.

358-372. University of Chicago. Epstein E. and Guttman R. (1984) Mate selection in man: evidence, theory, and outcome. Sot. Biol. 31, 241-278. Friedlander D. and Goldscheider C. (1984) Israel’s population: the challenge of pluralism. Popularion Reference Bureau.

Vol. 39, pp. l-39. Washington DC. Goldschmidt E. (Editor) (1963) The Generics o/ Migranf and Isolate Populations. Williams & Wilkins, New York. Guttman L. (1945) A basis for analyzing test-retest reliability. Psychometrika 10, 255-282. Guttman L. (1981) Efficacy coefficients for differences among averages. In Multidimensional Dora Representations; When

and Why (Edited by Borg I.) pp. I-10. Mathesis Press, Ann Arbor, Ml. Guttman L. (1985) The illogic of statistical inference for cumulative science. App. sroch. Models Data Anafy. 1, 310. Guttman L. (1986) Coefficients of polytonicity and monotonicity. Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences, Vol. 7, pp. 8&88.

Wiley, New York. Guttman R. and Zohar A. (1987) Spouse similarities in personality items: changes over years of marriage and implications

for mate selection. Behau. Gener. 17, 179-189. Guttman R.. Guttman L., and Rosenzweig K. A. (1967) Cross-ethnic variation in dental, sensory, and perceptual traits:

a non-metric bivariate derivation of distances for ethnic groups and traits. Am. J. phys. Anrhrop. 27, 259-276. Jensen, A. R. (1978) Genetic and behavioral effects of non-random mating. In Human Variation: Biogenetics of Age, Race

and Sex. (Edited by Noble C. E., Osborne R. T. and Weyle N.) pp. 51-105. Academic Press, New York. Peres Y. (1976) Efhnic Relations in Israel. Hapoalim, Tel Aviv. Peres Y. and Katz R. (1981) Stability and centrality: the nuclear family in Israel. Sot. Forces 59, 687-704. Peres Y. and Schrift R. (1978) Intermarriage and interethnic relations: a comparative study. Ethnic Racial Stud. 1,42845 1. Price and Vandenberg S. G. (1980) Spouse similarity in American and Swedish couples. Behau. Gener. 10, 5F71. Rosen Sh. (1982) Intermarriage and the “blending of exiles” in Israel. Res. Race erhnic Ref. 3, 79-102. Semyonov M. and Kraus V. (1983) Gender, ethnicity and income inequality: the Israeli experience. Inr. J. Camp. Social.

24, 258-272. Smooha S. and Peres Y. (1975) The dynamics of ethnic inequalities: The case of Israel. Sot. Dynamics 1. 63-79. Vandenberg S. G. (1972) Assortative mating, or who marries whom? Behav. Genef. 21, 127-157. Yinon Y. (1975) Authoritarianism and prejudice among married couples with similar or different ethnic origin is Israel.

J. Marriage Fam. 37, 21&220. Yogev A. and Jamshy H. (1983) Children of intermarriage in Israeli schools: are they marginal? 1. Marriage Fam. 4s.

965-974.