May personality influence the selection of life-long mate? A multivariate predictive model Antonio Cerasa 1,2 & Emiliano Cristiani 3 & Barbara De Luca 4 & Maria Luisa De Narda 5 & Maria Concetta Cundò 5 & Sara Concetta Bottani 4 & Iolanda Martino 5 & Alessia Sarica 5 & Daniela De Canditiis 3 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract The idea that individuals tend to choose a romantic partner following similarities on personality traits has always attracted much attention in the psychological literature, although results were controversial. We conducted a new data analysis approach to personality traits of 235 newlywed couples. Univariate analysis revealed that a neurotic husband is usually paired with a lesser extrovert and open wife. To figure out if this mating selection pattern may be translated in a mathematical predictive model a twofold approach was employed by using Partial Least Squares regression and machine learning algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that marital assortment for personality is a multi-trait complementarity process but these data are unable to predict human mating. Keywords Mate selection . Personality prediction . Partial least squares regression . Machine learning Introduction Is there a systematic pattern in human mating? This question has been the source of introspection for centuries among phi- losophers and psychologists. Evidence from genetic and evolutionary/social psychology widely demonstrated that hu- man mating strategies strongly depend on the similarity (Buss and Schmitt 1993; Thiessen et al. 1997; Bouchard and Loehlin 2001; Luo and Klohnen, 2005; Buss and Schmitt 2019; Glicksohn and Golan 2001). The similarity refers to stable partner characteristics, such as ethnicity, religion, attitudes, values, or personality, which can promote long-term relation- ship satisfaction by setting the stage for similar emotional experiences (Luo and Klohnen, 2005; Glicksohn and Golan 2001; Caspi and Herbener 1993; Watson et al. 2004). At a social level, couple similarity predicts marital satisfaction since similar spouses can create more homogeneous rearing environments that may well have important consequences for their offspring development (Thiessen et al. 1997; Caspi and Herbener 1993; Acitelli et al. 2001). Again, individuals tend to choose a partner based on gene similarity, which stabilizes relations and leads to greater reproduction (Buss and Schmitt 2019). Among similarity factors, personality has ever attracted much attention, since being similar to a partner can give more positive effects on relationship functioning (Thiessen et al. 1997). From an evolutionary point of view, several authors theorized that adaptation has created systematic patterns in the human mating based on the trust and stabil- ity, which confers several biological advantages (Buss 1985Buss and Schmitt 1993; Thiessen and Gregg 1980). The popular culture calls this mate preference as “type” when it comes to their partners’ personalities (Park and MacDonald 2019), whereas psychological science have tried to statistically define it in terms of “similarity” (Caspi and Herbener 1990; Watson et al. 2004; Luo and Klohnen, 2005). The idea was to understand and demon- strate why people end up with particular partners who are similar to them in terms of personality and which kind of similarity characterized this relationship. * Antonio Cerasa antonio.cerasa76@gmail.com 1 Institute for Biomedical Research and Innovation, CNR, 87050 Mangone, CS, Italy 2 S. Anna Institute and Research in Advanced Neurorehabilitation (RAN), Crotone, Italy 3 Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, CNR, Rome, Italy 4 Ascoc, Accademia di Scienze Cognitivo-Comportamentali di Calabria, Castrolibero, CS, Italy 5 Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences; University` “Magna Graecia”, Catanzaro, Italy Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00762-9