Compatibility: Definition, Examples, & Tips​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Compatibility is when people get along well together, often because their interests or personalities are similar or complement each other. Learn more below.
*This page may include affiliate links; that means we earn from qualifying purchases of products.
In my late twenties, I noticed a trend in my life that surprised me: most of my friends were women. While I had a couple of close male friends, I seemed to gravitate toward women, regardless of whether I was romantically interested in them or not.

After some reflection, I recognized that this was because I tend to be more compatible with women than men. 
For example, one of my favorite activities is talking about relationships, something that women are socialized to do much more than men are. At the same time, I knew there were plenty of men like me – I just needed to look harder for them. Today, I have a good number of friends of all genders, which I like to think reflects how compatibility is about personality and interests more than the demographic boxes we check.

In this article, I will discuss the science behind compatibility. Let’s see what psychology research can tell us about finding people with whom we are compatible.​
​Before reading on, if you're a therapist, coach, or wellness entrepreneur, be sure to grab our free Wellness Business Growth eBook to get expert tips and free resources that will help you grow your business exponentially.​​​​​​​​​
Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?

Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to
Grow Your Wellness Business Exponentially!

 ✓  Save hundreds of hours of time  ✓  Earn more $ faster  
​✓  Boost your credibility ✓  Deliver high-impact content 

What Is Compatibility? (A Definition)​

Compatibility is defined by psychologists as having several components (Sprecher, 2011). First, compatibility means people feel positively toward each other, whether that is feeling at ease around each other or being drawn to each other. Although negative emotions may come up sometimes in the relationship, they are not the norm when two people are compatible. Second, compatibility means enjoying what you do together; this could be as simple as just being in each other’s company, but it usually involves doing activities together that are mutually satisfying. In other words, in compatibility people find it not just pleasant, but also rewarding, to spend time together.
 
Finally, compatibility also is often considered to involve having mutual interests. In this regard, I think of how for young children, friendships are based primarily on liking the same activities. For example, in my first week of preschool, I proudly announced to my mother that I had made a new friend; although we had not yet spoken to each other or played together, he was wearing a t-shirt with my favorite TV show on it, so my little child brain knew we could be compatible.

Compatibility & Personal Characteristics

​A less essential but still common component of compatibility is the matching of personal characteristics (Houts et al., 1996). This can look like similarity or complementarity. For example, I find it very relaxing to spend time around people whose personalities and ways of relating are very similar to mine. At the same time, I find it invigorating and refreshing to be around people who are different from me; I think it keeps me from getting too comfortable in my ways.
 
That said, we have a natural tendency to gravitate toward people who are similar to us demographically (Houts et al., 1996). People who share our social class, racial or ethnic identity, or sexual identity are more likely than the average person to share our ways of relating to the world and our interests, so it is not surprising that friend groups are often pretty homogenous.
 
I think one scholar’s definition of compatibility is a nice summary of the idea. Berscheid (1985) wrote that compatibility between two people can be defined as the ratio of their interactions that facilitate closeness to their interactions that conflict or interfere with becoming closer. I like this definition because I think it reflects our natural decision-making processes around when and where we socialize. I naturally want to spend time with people with whom interactions are easy and positive; while I will spend time with people who are harder to connect with, it is not my preference.

Opposite of Compatibility

The opposite of compatibility is incompatibility, or the state of not being a good match in terms of personality traits and interests. When two people are incompatible, interacting is difficult, unintuitive, and unrewarding. For example, I once had a direct supervisor with whom every interaction felt effortful. It was hard for me to connect with his approach to work, and he did not put a high value on making personal connections with his employees.​

Why Is Compatibility Important?

If we return to our “ratio” definition of compatibility, we can see why compatibility is important: relationships with high rates of positive interactions and positive emotions are more likely to deepen and last, while relationships with less compatibility will remain challenging and less satisfying and usually end up involving less and less contact (Crawford et al., 2002).
 
Research tells us that compatibility is at the heart of successful friendships (Laursen, 2017) as well as mentoring or coaching relationships (Kenow & Williams, 1999). The more compatible we are, the more positively we evaluate other people’s behaviors (Kenow & Williams, 1999). Furthermore, the more compatible we are, the more compatible we are likely to become: friends seem to become more similar over time as a result of their compatibility and time spent together (Laursen, 2017). This in turn makes the relationship more likely to continue.

What Leads To Compatibility?

One theory of compatibility simply states that similarities are attractive to us, and the drive to be around similar people leads us to feel compatible with those people (Montoya & Horton, 2013). Being similar makes it easier to connect immediately, easier to cooperate with others, and easier to find the relationship rewarding right away (Laursen, 2017). I think this is why I find it particularly enjoyable to find other men with whom I am compatible – while I am immensely grateful for my friendships with women, there is something special about finding another person with whom I can connect who also shares my experience of manhood.

Compatibility-Seeking

Social scientists have long documented this form of compatibility-seeking in what they call assortative mating (Thiessen, 1999). This is the fancy psychology term for the phenomenon of people choosing romantic partners with whom they are demographically similar. While this is typically measured in terms of selecting a partner who is similar in age, race, religion, socioeconomic status, and education, it also appears in our preference for people with levels of physical attractiveness, personality traits, and personal interests that are like ours. This seems to help with relationship outcomes: for example, people who are matched in their religiosity tend to have longer-lasting and more satisfying romantic relationships (Cassepp-Borges, 2021).
 
In pursuing connections with people who are similar to us, we may be seeking people who are genetically similar to us (Rushton & Nicholson, 1988). We may also be seeking people who reflect the environment of our childhood and who help us recreate the interpersonal experiences we had with our families of origin (Reynolds et al., 2000). Or we may simply find it more rewarding to be around people who do the things we enjoy (Aron et al., 2000).

Personality Traits & Compatibility

Research does suggest that certain personality traits make some people more readily compatible with others. People who are high in agreeableness and extraversion and who demonstrate a secure attachment style, seem to have an easier time being compatible with others than do people who are high in neuroticism and have an insecure attachment style (Barelds, 2005; Caughlin et al., 2000).
 
If you would like to know more about what makes people compatible with each other, you could check out this interview with a psychologist on the topic:

Video: The Psychology Of Compatibility​

Examples of Compatibility

Examples of compatibility easily come to mind when I think about times I have tried to play matchmaker for my friends. When two people seem to have the same sense of humor or a shared passion for a particular hobby, I get excited at the thought of them getting to know each other and becoming friends. When people seem compatible on several levels, I start to wonder if there might be romantic compatibility as well. For example, the happiest couples I know often have shared interests, similar or complementary personalities, and some degree of a shared background.

I went to a small liberal arts college which we sometimes called the “Matchbox” because so many of us developed relationships with other students that led to marriage. This was a clear example of assortative mating: people of similar intellectual abilities, who had chosen the same educational experience and then had a wealth of shared experiences from going to school together, were likely to be pretty compatible.

Compatibility in Relationship

In romantic relationships, we have an intuitive sense of initial compatibility, and although we try our best to assess for long-term compatibility from the moment we meet someone, it usually takes time for us to understand if the compatibility is there (Eastwick, 2016). It becomes clear to us, over lifetimes of dating and relationships, that certain combinations of our traits with other people’s traits are more or less likely to work for us (Houts et al., 1996; Levinger & Rands, 1985).
 
But these combinations are difficult to know beforehand—when researchers have tried to predict relationship compatibility using many different psychological measures, they have observed that knowing just one person’s personality and preferences is not a very helpful predictor of relationship outcomes (Joel et al., 2017). When two people who are high in compatibility do get together, they seem to have better relationship quality than less compatible couples (Wilson & Cousins, 2003).

Compatibility Vs. Love

Compatibility is a critical component of romantic love (Karney & Bradbury, 1995). This does not mean that we need to find the person with whom we are most compatible, but it does mean that matching with a potential partner in terms of things such as interest in each other, sex drive, and attachment styles is helpful in promoting the development of love (Eastwick et al., 2023).​

Compatibility Vs. Passion

Compatibility is about matching personality and interests, while passion is the desire to be close to someone. I believe these two characteristics are mutually reinforcing: compatibility may promote passion for another person, while passion can also drive us to become more compatible as we spend positive time together.​

Tips on Finding A Compatible Relationship

Beyond our initial experience of attraction to another person, it can be difficult to know how compatible we are. A variety of factors somewhat beyond our control, from random events in our lives to the experiences we have with another person as the relationship develops, powerfully influence our compatibility (Eastwick, 2016; Karney & Bradbury, 1995). One tip that emerges from the psychology research is to partner with somebody with whom you share common interests, such as leisure activities (Crawford et al., 2002). In other words, couples that have multiple options for enjoyably spending downtime together are often the happier couples.
 
My other tip for finding a compatible relationship is to avoid overinvesting at the outset. Our judgment of compatibility can become clouded by the excitement and passion of starting a relationship, and we may move into greater commitment to the other person without paying attention to the quality of fit. For example, one study found that couples who waited longer to start having sex with each other had higher relationship quality on average, even when characteristics such as their religiosity and past relationships were taken into account (Busby et al., 2010). 

​List of Characteristics That May Contribute To Compatibility

​In addition to the characteristics I mentioned above, people who are interpersonally warm are more easily compatible with others (Finkel et al., 2012). Beyond this, however, it really does come down to how well two people’s personalities and interests match each other – your personal traits make you compatible with some people and less compatible with others. So rather than worrying about whether you are naturally likable, I think it is more beneficial to focus on what, or who, will be compatible with you (Marchi et al., 2023): what are your values, lifestyle preferences, and opinions? People who match you on these characteristics are more likely to be compatible with you.

Quotes on Compatibility

  • “People don't scream or swear or pout or sulk when there's compatibility. But most growth occurs when there's incompatibility. When it comes to resilience, when it comes to pulling yourself up when you've fallen down, you don't learn those things when things are going well. You learn those things when you're struggling.” – Ross W. Greene
  • “There are 3 levels of compatibility in intimate relationships that connect the most subtle realm of spirit to the most outer, dense form of body. There must be alignment in heart, through life view and spiritual intention; mind, through clear, open communication; and body, through physical chemistry. Compatibility on all 3 levels of heart, mind, and body is the ultimate love relationship, which everyone is seeking!” – John Friend
  • “Chemistry does not guarantee compatibility.” – Amy Chan
  • “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.” – Leo Tolstoy

Articles Related to Compatibility

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Compatibility

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Compatibility​

Compatibility is idiosyncratic – it is all about the context of the moment: who you are, where you are, and where you are going. My close friends these days are different in some substantial ways from friends of the past, because I have changed a lot over the years. From a place of knowing yourself well, I hope you can find people who are compatible with just who you are.​

Don't Forget to Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to
Grow Your Wellness Business Exponentially!

References
Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?
Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to Grow Your Wellness Business Fast!
Key Articles:Content Packages:
Terms, Privacy & Affiliate Disclosure  |   About   |   Blog   |   Contact   |   FAQs
* The Berkeley Well-Being Institute. LLC is not affiliated with UC Berkeley.
Copyright © 2024, The Berkeley Well-Being Institute, LLC