Goring[1] considers that assortative mating is a factor of greater importance in the upper than in the lower social classes. In his records for insanity in criminals, he finds an assortative mating +.35 for the "well-to-do and prosperous poor" while it is probably absent in the "very poor and destitute."[2]
V. Preferential Mating and Assortative Mating for Social Attributes
To mark off sharply social attributes from those which are physical and psychical is as impossible as it is idle. Certain traits dependent on wealth, family history, education or opportunity may be, for convenience merely, designated as social. To what extent do they influence mating?
Their potency is greatest in caste, royalty and peerage. Even in countries which pride themselves on the absence of social strata, wealth, family pride and feuds, religion and education, play their part in limiting the range of choice in marriage selection. But nowhere is mating within the class universal. The much-multiplied American dollar plays havoc with continental pedigrees. The pure breeding of the English nobility is a pretence; "the lawyer, the farmer, the silk mercer lies perdu under the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say nothing." Some day the weight of these social forces will be determined, but the proper kinds of facts are not yet available.
Alcoholism is one of those interesting cases in which direct personal or social influence may supplement and reinforce the resemblance possibly due to assortative mating. Goring,[3] dividing his material for English criminals[4] into three classes for social status, finds these coefficients of resemblance:
| Very poor and destitute | + .44 |
| Prosperous poor | + .58 |
| Well-to-do | + .69 |
| All | + .70 |
- ↑ As a check, Goring determined the correlation between phthisis in one and insanity in the other member of a wedded pair. The resemblance was found to be sensibly zero.
- ↑ Goring, Chas., "Stud. Nat. Det.," 5, p. 27.
- ↑ The reader in noting the high values given for alcoholism by Goring will remember that the individuals studied are the parents of criminals, and that there is a known association between criminality and alcoholism. From data collected by Heymans and Wiersma, Schuster and Elderton (Biometrika, Vol. 5, p. 468, 1908) calculated a correlation for tendency towards drink of + .24 to + .36. But there are several reasons for doubting the trustworthiness of these data.
- ↑ Goring, C., "On the Inheritance of the Diathesis of Phthisis and Insanity: A Statistical Study based upon the Family History of 1,500 Criminals," Drapers Co. Res. Mem., "Stud. Nat. Det.," 5, London, 1909, Dulau & Co.
