theories of romantic relationships:social exchange theory Flashcards
(7 cards)
Rewards, costs and profits
John Thibault and Harold Kelley (1959) proposed social exchange theory (SET), claiming that behaviour in relationships reflects the economic assumptions of exchange. Most importantly, they say we try to minimise losses and maximise gains (the minimax principle). We judge our satisfaction with a relationship in terms of the profit it yields, defined as the rewards
minus the costs.
Because such rewards and costs are subjective, there exists a very wide range of possible outcomes. What one person considers a significant reward might be viewed by someone else as less valuable. For example, you might consider receiving praise from your partner as a prized reward, but your partner can take it or leave it. Also, the value of rewards and costs might well change over the course of a relationship. What is seen as rewarding or costly in the early stages, for instance, might become less so as time goes on.
Rewards include such beneficial things as companionship, sex and emotional support.
But a romantic relationship is not always a bed of roses. It can involve negative and unpleasant emotions as well as pleasurable ones. In the economic language of Peter Blau
(1964) relationships can be expensive, so costs include time, stress, energy, compromise, and so on. Also in economic terms, a relationship incurs another kind of cost, an opportunity cost. Your investment of time and energy in your current relationship means using resources that you cannot invest elsewhere.
Comparison level
There are two ways in which we measure the profit in a romantic relationship. The first, the comparison level (CL), is essentially the amount of reward that you believe you deserve to get. It develops out of our experiences of previous relationships which feed into our expectations of the current one. It is also influenced by social norms that determine what is widely considered, within a culture, to be a reasonable level of reward. This is often reflected in books, films and TV programmes such as soap operas. Over time, we get more relationships under our belt’ and more experience of social norms, so our CL changes as we acquire more ‘data to set it by.
We consider a relationship worth pursuing if our CL is high. There is an obvious link with self-esteem here. Someone with low self-esteem will have a low CL and will therefore be satisfied with gaining just a small profit (or even a loss) from a relationship. Someone with higher self-esteem will believe they are worth a lot more.
Comparison level for alternatives
The second measure of profit, the comparison level for alternatives (CLalt), provides a wider context for our current relationship. Do we believe we could gain greater rewards and fewer costs from another relationship (or from being on our own)? Given that romantic relationships in our culture are usually exclusive, we ask ourselves, ‘Could I do better? Is the grass greener elsewhere?. SET predicts that we will stay in our current relationship only so long as we believe it is more rewarding than the alternatives.
According to relationships researcher Steve Duck (1994), the CLalt we adopt will depend on the state of our current relationship. There are usually plenty more fish in the sea, so if the costs of our current relationship outweigh the rewards, then alternatives become more attractive.
stages of relationship development
Another feature of Thibault and Kelley’s social exchange theory concerns the four stages through which relationships (and the social exchanges which underpin them) develop:
• Sampling stage - we explore the rewards and costs of social exchange by experimenting doing so.
with them in our own relationships (not just romantic ones), or by observing others
• Bargaining stage - this marks the beginning of a relationship, when romantic partners
start exchanging various rewards and costs, negotiating and identifying what is most
• Commitment stage - as time goes on, the sources of costs and rewards become more predictable and the relationship becomes more stable as rewards increase and costs lessen.
• Institutionalisation stage - the partners are now settled down because the norms of the relationship, in terms of rewards and costs, are firmly established.
strength-research support
One strength is support for aspects of SET from research studies.
Lawrence Kurdek (1995) asked gay, lesbian and heterosexual couples to complete questionnaires measuring relationship commitment and SET variables. He found that those partners who were most committed also perceived the most rewards and fewest costs and viewed alternatives as relatively unattractive. More importantly this was the first study to demonstrate that the main SET concepts that predict commitment are independent of each other (so they individually have an effect).
These findings match predictions from SET, strongly confirming the validity of the theory in gay and lesbian couples as well as in heterosexual partners.
Counterpoint Studies into SET (including Kurdek’s) ignore one crucial factor that may be an overwhelming consideration for romantic partners - equity. The next spread explains how this shortcoming of SET has been addressed by another theory (equity theory). There is much research support for the role of equity in relationships. What matters is not just the balance of rewards and costs, but the partners’ perceptions
that this is fair.
The neglect of equity means that SET is a limited explanation which cannot account for a significant proportion of the research findings on relationships.
limitation- cause and effect
One limitation of SET is its claim that dissatisfaction arises only after a relationship stops being profitable.
According to SET, we become dissatisfied when we conclude that the costs of the relationship outweigh its rewards and/or that the alternatives are more attractive (i.e. these factors cause dissatisfaction). But Michael Argyle (1987) argued that we don’t monitor costs and rewards, or consider alternatives, until after we are dissatisfied. When we are satisfied with a relationship and committed to it, we do not even notice potentially attractive alternatives.
This suggests that considering costs/alternatives is caused by dissatisfaction rather than the reverse (dissatisfaction causes a person to consider costs/alternatives).
limitation-vague concepts
Another limitation is that SET deals in concepts that are vague and hard to quantify.
Rewards and costs have been defined superficially in research (e.g. money) in order to measure them. But real-world psychological rewards and costs are subjective and harder to define. For example most people would consider ‘having your partner’s loyalty to be rewarding. But rewards and costs vary a lot from one person to another - even ‘having loyalty is not a reward for everyone. The concept of comparison levels is especially problematic. It is unclear what the values of CL and CLalt must be before dissatisfaction threatens a relationship.
This means the theory is difficult to test in a valid way.
