ArticleNature human behaviour2023
Partner choice, confounding and trait convergence all contribute to phenotypic partner similarity.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Population-Level Implications of Parental Similarity for the Prevalence and Heritability of Psychiatric Disorders.JAMA psychiatry · 2026Article
- Genetic similarity between partners has intensified throughout the 20th century.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Parental haplotype reconstruction in up to 440,209 UK and Estonian individuals reveals recent assortative mating dynamics.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Why psychopathology research should avoid studying one mental disorder at a time: An intergenerational and developmental evidence base for understanding "p".Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2026Review
- Familial healthy aging and longevity: the role of spouses.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Spousal correlations for nine psychiatric disorders are consistent across cultures and persistent over generations.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Diet as a source of the non-direct genetic effects in metabolic traits: evidence from a family-based GWAS study.Human genetics · 2025Article
- [Spousal correlations of blood lipid based on a family design].Beijing da xue xue bao. Yi xue ban = Journal of Peking University. Health sciences · 2025Article
- Understanding indirect assortative mating and its intergenerational consequences for educational attainment.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Non-random mating patterns within and across education and mental and somatic health.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Non-random Mating Patterns in Education, Mental, and Somatic Health: A Population Study on Within- and Cross-Trait Associations.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Genetic similarity between relatives provides evidence on the presence and history of assortative mating.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Participation bias in the UK Biobank distorts genetic associations and downstream analyses.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Partners are often similar in terms of their physical and behavioural traits, such as their education, political affiliation and height. However, it is currently unclear what exactly causes this similarity-partner choice, partner influence increasing similarity over time or confounding factors such as shared environment or indirect assortment. Here, we applied Mendelian randomization to the data of 51,664 couples in the UK Biobank and investigated partner similarity in 118 traits. We found evidence of partner choice for 64 traits, 40 of which had larger phenotypic correlation than causal effect. This suggests that confounders contribute to trait similarity, among which household income, overall health rating and education accounted for 29.8, 14.1 and 11.6% of correlations between partners, respectively. Finally, mediation analysis revealed that most causal associations between different traits in the two partners are indirect. In summary, our results show the mechanisms through which indirect assortment increases the observed partner similarity.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.