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Category: Data

Description: Although typically assessed via self-reports, knowledgeable informants (e.g., spouses) may provide additional important information about adult personality. Past work suggests spouses have low actual similarity on personality but higher perceived similarity. While self-informant agreement on personality is higher among spouses compared to other dyads, agreement varies across couples, with little known about what influences agreement. This paper examines actual and perceived similarity, and self-informant agreement on traits among 376 heterosexual married couples. Additionally, we extended this work by investigating the moderation of couples’ agreement on normative and non-adaptive personality traits by relationship satisfaction. Self-informant agreement was significant for many traits. Relationship satisfaction moderated agreement in several personality traits. We discuss potential mechanisms driving these moderations and implications for personality assessment.