Cultural Variation in Parental Influence on Mate Choice

Abstract

Contrary to assumptions underlying current psychological theories of human mating, throughout much of human history parents often controlled the mating behavior of their children. In the present research, the authors tested the hypothesis that the level of parental influence on mating is associated with the level of collectivism in a culture. A scale to assess the degree of parental influence on mate choice was administered to four samples: 371 students from the Netherlands; 197 young people from Kurdistan, Iraq; 80 students from 30 different countries studying in the Netherlands; and 102 students in Canada. As expected, the Kurdish sample reported higher levels of parental influence on mate choice than the Dutch sample, and parental influence was found to be higher in more collectivistic countries. In the Canadian sample, participants with an East Asian background (who have greater exposure to collectivistic cultural norms) indicated greater parental influence than did participants with a European background.