Both sexes choose mates based on qualities that will enhance offspring
viability and quality. The Reproductive Compensation Hypothesis (RCH)
predicts that parents who mate under constraint will increase their
reproductive effort and investment in offspring to compensate for lowered
offspring viability. One possible type of mate choice constraint in humans
is arranged marriage in which parents or others choose mates. In order to
test the RCH in humans, we examine whether there are differences in both
partner traits, parental investment, and alloparental help between women in
arranged marriages and those in self-choice marriages using data from the
Indonesian Family Life Survey. The rate of arranged marriage has declined
from approximately 34% of marriages in 1993 to only 11% in 2015. Except
for education level and the personality trait of originality, no
differences were found in mate characteristics between the husbands of
women in self-choice compared to arranged marriages. Marriage type did not
significantly correlate with parental investment except for number of live
births where women in self-choice marriages had more offspring (controlling
for marriage duration) than woman in arranged marriages, counter to
predictions. It is possible that arranged marriage is not a true constraint
on mate choice in humans.
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Associate Professor & Graduate Coordinator, Department of Anthropology
Program Coordinator, Data Science for the Liberal Arts
Boise State University
*Pronouns: she/her/hers*
personal website <https://www.kristinsnopkowski.com/>