Scientists have found out how profession influences the choice of a partner

A person's profession says virtually nothing about what they look for in a romantic partner. This unexpected conclusion was reached by an international team of scientists who surveyed nearly two thousand adults in seven countries around the world. The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences (PID).

Psychologists have long viewed professional interests as a manifestation of deep personality traits: some are drawn to working with people, others with objects and systems, and still others with data and ideas. It would be logical to assume that such a fundamental characteristic might also influence one's choice of life partner. Researchers from the University of Wrocław (Poland) and the Catholic University of Portugal set out to test this hypothesis.

A total of 1,974 people from the USA, Germany, South Africa, and other countries participated in the large-scale survey. They were divided into three groups by field of activity: people-oriented (746 individuals), thing-oriented (289), and abstract-category-oriented (710). Each participant completed a forced-choice task twice: imagining short-term and long-term relationships, they determined which of five qualities mattered most — physical attractiveness, kindness, competence, compatibility, or character.

The result was unequivocal: field of work was almost entirely unrelated to romantic preferences. People oriented toward social interaction and those who work with objects made virtually identical choices regarding competence and compatibility in both scenarios. The difference between groups turned out to be so small that it was deemed statistically insignificant.

"Your job says very little about what you want in a partner. Among 1,974 adults across seven countries, field of activity had almost no effect on how often they chose appearance, kindness, competence, compatibility, or character. Gender and whether they were imagining a fling or a long-term relationship mattered far more," noted study co-author Dritjon Gruda from the Catholic University of Portugal.

Gender and relationship context, however, proved to be far more powerful factors. In both scenarios, men noticeably more often chose physical attractiveness, while women preferred kindness and competence. For example, in the long-term relationship scenario, men chose appearance an average of 1.13 times compared to 0.60 for women, while women chose kindness 2.51 times compared to 2.08 for men.

Relationship context shifted priorities even more than profession did. When participants imagined a short-term fling, they chose physical attractiveness nearly three times more often — 2.33 versus 0.85. To "accommodate" this emphasis on appearance, the selection of compatibility, kindness, and character dropped by roughly half a point each.

"The main takeaway: knowing a person's field of work, we can say very little about their partner preferences once gender is accounted for. What matters far more is whether the person is thinking about short-term or long-term relationships," Gruda concluded.