By: Sylvie Cancellier 07, Benjamin Pannell 07, Erin Pavane 06, Deborah Reyes 07, Mary Romprey 07

1
World Hypothesis and Romantic Compatibility

• By Sylvie Cancellier 07, Benjamin Pannell 07,
  Erin Pavane 06, Deborah Reyes 07, Mary Romprey
  07
• (Sponsor James Laird)

Abstract

• SAMPLE Compatibility Test
• I GIVE PEOPLE THE BENEFIT OF THE
• DOUBT.
• completely agree
• mostly agree
• somewhat agree
• sort of false
• completely false

SAMPLE World Hypothesis SUE IS BORROWING A LOT
OF MONEY. _____A. Sue is a big spender. She is
the kind of person who could be expected to buy
things before she has saved up for them. _____B.
Sue is borrowing a lot of money because she wants
to buy a new car. Thus, there is a specific
reason for her borrowing money at this time.
_____C. There are many ways to look at Sue's
borrowing a lot of money. Economically she feels
one way about it and emotionally she feels
another way about it. There is no one way she
sees it. _____D. Sue's borrowing money now is
one stage in the development of her
dependability. This development has roots in her
past and there are staged in the future through
which she will pass. (a.CONTEXTUALIST,b.MECHANIST
,c.ORGANIST,d.FORMIST)
The current study examined compatibility among
couples in romantic relationships. The results
reveal that people who share the same World
Hypothesis were the most compatible in comparison
with those who did not share the same World
Hypothesis. The results also showed the longer
the relationship, the more Compatible the world
hypotheses of the partners.
Relationship Length Compatibility
Introduction
People in society commonly wonder about what
traits make a person and his/her partner a
compatible couple. This experiment delves into
the question of compatibility. Apparently,
everyone has a World Hypothesis, or an approach
to lifes situations and events. There are four
perspectives on World Hypothesis one can possess
these are Formist, Mechanist, Organist, and
Contextualist. The Formist and Mechanist
perspectives are common in the Western hemisphere
of the world. Formists tend to classify
everything they encounter on a basis of
similarity and differences by assigning labels
and categories to everything. Mechanists tend to
view the world as a great machine, where every
event has a cause of some sort. When analyzing a
situation, they search for an event that caused
the situation. Mechanism is the most dominant
perspective in Western culture. Organist and
Contextualist perspectives are more common in the
Eastern hemisphere. Organicists view the world as
an organism. As a result, they believe that
nothing can be properly analyzed unless it is
viewed as part of a whole, or greater body. As a
result, when analyzing situations, they often
have a long-term outlook of things.
Contextualists view the world as consisting of
interconnected parts. As a result, they analyze
situations as never being able to happen without
their many interdependent causes. According to
Steven Pepper, who originally identified the
concept of the four hypotheses, those who have
differing world hypotheses have greater
difficulty agreeing. The purpose of this
experiment was to explore the role of world
hypotheses in romantic relationships. Our
hypothesis was that couples who shared the same
world hypotheses or compatible hypotheses would
be more romantically compatible.
Correlation of Couples Their World Hypotheses
Scores
Compatibility Chart
Discussion
KEY Blue World hypotheses Red Incompatible
(un-adjacent) world hypotheses Green Compatible
(adjacent) world hypotheses
Our results showed that people who shared the
same world hypotheses were very compatible.
Partners who shared adjacent world hypotheses
were less compatible, and partners who had
un-adjacent world hypotheses were incompatible.
There was a correlation between the World
Hypothesis Test and the Compatibility Test
showing that the longer a couple has been
together, the more compatible their world
hypotheses. This may mean that couples with the
same world hypotheses or an adjacent World
Hypothesis would have a longer relationship.
Results from the Compatibility Test showed that
women and men moderately agree on their level of
compatibility. The compatibility level felt by
men and their relationship length increased
exponentially, while the compatibility level of
their girlfriends remained static throughout
their relationship. Over time, men felt more
compatible than they did when they first entered
the relationship. Women, however, continued to
feel the same way they did at the beginning of
the relationship. We found that couples that were
compatible agreed upon their level of
compatibility with each other. As previous
research has shown, the majority of people in
U.S. are Mechanist. People in Western cultures
tend to be Formist and Mechanist. Whereas, people
in Eastern cultures tend to be Organicist and
Contextualist. We found that most men and women
are Mechanists. The second largest group of
people are Formists. We also found a significant
sex difference in the Mechanist scores. We found
that men tend to be Mechanists whereas women tend
to be Contextualists. Our results also show that
Mechanists may be more likely to be in a
relationship than any other world hypotheses
personality type. We hypothesize that our study
could have benefited from having a larger sample
of TRUE Compatibility Test questions. What we
should have done was pick what we felt were the
most important personality traits and asked more
questions under those select categories.
Results
Methods

• We found the following results
• Mens view of their level of compatibility
  increases as the length of their relationship
  increases.
• In contrast, womens view of compatibility were
  not associated with the length of their
  relationship.
• Moderate significance was found regarding the
  level of compatibility each member of the couple
  agreed they were.
• The World Hypothesis Test showed that the
  majority of couples rated Mechanist responses
  most frequently, while Formist responses were the
  next frequently chosen response.
• Men were found to be more Mechanist, while women
  were more Contextualist.
• Finally, our main hypothesis was that couples
  with compatible world hypotheses would also have
  more enduring relationships. This hypothesis was
  confirmed, as couples with identical or
  relatively compatible world hypotheses had been
  in their relationship for a longer time.

• 50 college-aged couples (18-23) of varying
  relationship lengths and of both hetero and
  homosexual preferences were given two
  psychological tests to complete individually. The
  participants were asked to refrain from
  discussing subject matter prior, during, and
  following completion of the tests to minimize any
  relationship strain that could result from
  participating in the study.
• The World Hypothesis test consists of 13 simple
  statements describing an event,followed by four
  alternative explanations, each one intending to
  represent one of the world hypotheses.The
  participants were asked to rate each explanation
  from 0-5 depending on how relevant each
  explanation was to them. They were instructed to
  choose the explanation they identified with the
  most and give it a score of 5.For the remaining
  explanations, they were told to rate them from
  0-4, 0 being the least favorable and four being
  the most favorable.A score is obtained for each
  subject for each of the four orientations based
  upon the sum of his rankings for that
  orientation.
• The compatibility test contains a selection of 26
  questions, each question representing a factor
  that has been predetermined as being important in
  romantic compatibility.
• The following chart shows the compatibility of
  adjacent and the incompatibility of un-adjacent
  world hypotheses (Formist, Mechanist, Organicist,
  and Contextualist).

References

• Iiona Jerabek,Ph.D. (2003). The Technical Manual
  of the TRUE Compatibility Test(TCT). Retrieved
  February 15, 2006, from http//72.14.203.104/searc
  h?qcacheKr4JE5Wcm5cJwww.true.com/images/tctmanu
  al.pdftctcompatibilitytesthlenglusctclnk
  cd1
• Bethel, Maxine Laird, James. (Unpublished).
  World Hypothesis Test.