Psychology

Similarity is an important component of marital satisfaction for couples; however, current research on the relationship between the two presents conflicting conclusions. So, in which dimensions are couples actually similar, and how does similarity affect marital satisfaction? This study recruited 638 Chinese couples as participants and adopted the Couple-Centered Approach (CCA). Using Profile-Couple Similarity (PCS) and Actor-Dissimilarity Score (ADS) as indicators, we integrated actor effects, partner effects, similarity effects, and dissimilarity effects to examine the relationship between similarity in individual, interactional, and family-of-origin variables and marital satisfaction across different marital stages. The results indicate that: (1) real couples are more similar than randomly matched couples; (2) compared to individual traits and interaction styles, couples exhibit greater similarity in family-of-origin dimensions; (3) the impact of couple similarity on marital satisfaction varies by gender across different marital stages; (4) although similarity influences marital satisfaction, the actor effect remains the strongest predictor of marital satisfaction.