Data from married couples in the United Kingdom (N = 6,554), Australia (N = 5,278), and the United Kingdom (N = 11,418) were used to examine the intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of personality on relationship and life satisfaction. The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006) was used to examine three kinds of personality effects: actor effects, partner effects, and similarity effects. Across these three large, nationally representative samples there was clear evidence of actor and partner effects of personality for both marital and life satisfaction. In addition, despite the sufficient statistical power provided by these large samples and the use of different indexes to capture similarity in both elevation and profile shape, there was no consistent evidence that the dyadic variable of similarity matters over and above the actor and partner effects of personality.
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