ychological origins, as work prior to Winch’s focused primarily on structural and normative influences in mate selection. The work of Winch set the stage for research commencing in the 1960s that began to examine the processes of mate selection on the dyadic level.
Process Theories of Mate Selection
The process of selecting a mate received considerable attention beginning in the 1970s. The basic form these theories take follows the ‘‘filter theory’’ of Alan Kerckoff and Keith Davis (1962). Kerckoff and Davis found empirical support that individuals, having met through the channels of propinquity and endogamy, proceed through a series of stages or steps in the development of the relationship. According to their theory, social status variables such as social class and race operate early on in the relationship to bring people together. The next stage involved the consensus of values, during which time the couple determines the degree of similarity in their value orientations. Couples who share similar values are likely to continue to the third stage, need complementarity. However, the data collected by Kerckoff and Davis offered only weak support for need complementarity as part of the process of mate selection.
Development of process theories of mate selection continued into the 1970s and is exemplified in the work of Ira Reiss (1960), Bernard Murstein (1970), Robert Lewis (1973), and R. Centers (1975). While these theoretical perspectives differ in terms of the order and nature of the stages, they have much in common. Melding these theories of mate selection, the following assumptions can be made concerning the stages of dyad formation that lead to marriage:
All the studies of the mate selection process have struggled with methodological difficulties. Most studies have relied on small, volunteer samples of couples. Most have used college-age, nevermarried couples. Finally, most studies have made extensive use of retrospection in assessing the process of dyad formation rather than collecting longitudinal data. These methodological difficulties may, in part, account for the recent decline in the number of studies examining the process of mate selection.
Furthermore, these stages may or may not result in marriage, but the primary focus of the research is on relationships that endure or terminate in marriage. Therefore, relatively little is known about the mate selection process as it pertains to rejection of a potential mate or how such terminations of relationships affect subsequent mate selection processes.
More current research has begun to shift away from antecedents that lead to legal marriage and turn instead to disentangling the trajectory of relationship development over the life course. More attention will turn to the formation and development of interpersonal relationships that may move through stages of romance, cohabitation, friendship, marriage, divorce, and so forth. Emphasis on relationship quality and durability, gender role negotiations, commitment processes, and romantic love have recently taken on increased importance in social science studies of mate selection (Surra and Hughes 1997; Houts et al. 1996; Surra 1990).
Many of the theories have also overlooked the influence of peer groups and family members in the mate selection process. The theoretical and empirical inquiry that has paid attention to peer and kin influences is restricted to studies of dating. Unfortunately, studies of dating and studies of mate selection have not been sufficiently integrated to provide the field with adequate data concerning the interrelationships between dating and mate selection processes.
Yet another area of research that has the potential for contribution to further understanding of the mate selection process is studies of romantic love. Process theories of mate selection seldom examine love as the basis, or even as a stage, in the development of a heterosexual relationship. While there is a large body of empirical and theoretical work on romantic love, conceptually the studies of love have been treated as quite distinct