Theories Of Romantic Relationships: Social Exchange Theory

What is social exchange theory?

A theory of how romantic relationships form and develop, it assumes that romantic partners act out of self-interest in exchanging rewards and costs.

What did Thibault and Kelley propose?

Social exchange theory (SET), claiming that behaviour in relationships reflects the econoic assumptions in change.

Most importantly, what do Thibault and Kelley say?

That in relationships, 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.

What is the profit defined by?

The rewards minus the costs.

Since rewards and costs are subjective, what is there a very wide range of?

Possible outcomes. What one person considers a significant reward might be viewed by someone else as less valuable.

Over the course of a relationship, what might change?

The value of rewards and costs. What is seen as rewarding or costly in the early stages for instance, might well change over the course of a relationship.

What do rewards include?

Such beneficial things as companionship, sex and emotional support.

How does Blau describe relationships, and what do costs include?

As ‘expensive‘, so costs include time stress, energy, compromise and so on.

In economic terms, what other kind of cost does a relationship incur?

An opportunity cost: your investment of time and energy in your current relationship means using resources that you cannot invest elsewhere.

What are the two ways we measure the profit in a romantic relationship?

• Comparison level (CL).

• Comparison level for alternatives (CLalt).

What is CL?

It 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.

What else is CL 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.

When do we consider a relationship worth pursuing?

If our CL is high. There is an obvious link with self-esteem here.

What is an example of the link between CL and self-esteem?

Someone with low self-esteem will have a low CL and will therefore be satisfied with just a small profit (or even a loss) from a relationship. Someone with higher self-esteem will believe they are worth a lot more.

What does CLalt provide?

It provides a wider context for our current relationship.

What does SET predict about staying in our current relationship?

That we will only do so as long as we beleive it is more rewarding than the alternatives.

What does Duck argue about the CLalt?

That 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.

What is another feature of Thibault and Kelley’s social exchange theory?

It concerns the four stages through which relationships (and the social exchanges which underpin them) develop.

What are the four stages of relationship development?

• Sampling.

• Bargaining.

• Commitment.

• Institutionalisation.

What is the sampling stage?

When we explore the rewards and costs of social exchange by experimenting with them in our own relationships (not just romantic ones), or by observing others doing so.

What is the bargaining stage?

This marks the beginning of a relationship, when romantic partners start exchanging various rewards and costs, negotiating and identifying what is most profitable.

What is the 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.

What is the institutionalisation stage?

The partners are now settled down because the norms of the relationship, in terms of rewards and costs, are firmly established.

What is the strength of SET?

• Research support.

How is research support a strength of SET?

Kurdek 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).

What does the research support mean for SET?

These findings match predictions from SET, strongly confirming the validity of the theory in gay and lesbian couples as well as in heterosexual partners.

What is the counterpoint to the research support?

Studies into SET (including Kurdeks) 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.

What does the counterpoint to the research support mean?

The neglect of equity means that SET is a limited explanation which cannot account for a significant proportion of the research findings on relationships.

What are the limitations of SET?

• Direction of cause and effect.

• Vague concepts.

How is the direction of cause and effect a limitation of SET?

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 (ie, these factors cause dissatisfaction), But Argyle 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

What does the direction of cause and effect mean for SET?

It suggests that considering costs/alternatives is caused by dissatisfaction rather than the reverse (dissatisfaction causes a person to consider costs/alternatives).

How is vague concepts a limitation of SET?

SET deals in concepts that are vague and hard to quantity. 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.

What do the vague concepts mean for SET?

This means the theory is difficult to test in a valid way.