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Bonds That Define Us: Key Theories and Definitions of Interpersonal Relationships
Advanced Social Psychology · Chapter 7: Belonging, Attraction, and Interpersonal RelationshipsSection 7.6 · lesson 45 of 8510 min · free with a free account
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Next lesson: More Than Just Connection: The Types and Functions of Interpersonal Relationships →← Attraction Across Borders: Types, Cultural Differences, and Interpersonal DrawNext lesson: More Than Just Connection: The Types and Functions of Interpersonal Relationships →
In this lesson
Four frameworks for what a relationship is, and why people stay in one.
- Define a relationship as causal interdependence over time
- Compare exchange, equity, and interdependence frameworks
- Apply the investment model's 3 predictors of commitment
- Use attachment and the communal-exchange distinction
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Everything said in the video, section by section (1,366 words). Read along, or search it.
Belonging, Attraction, and Interpersonal Relationships
Bonds That Define Us
So far this chapter has been about getting into a relationship. This section is about what a relationship is, and why people stay. Those two questions turn out to have different answers. Four frameworks, each good at a different part of the problem. Social exchange treats relationships as rewards weighed against costs. Equity theory adds a fairness criterion on top. The investment model adds the thing both of those miss. And attachment theory looks backward, to where the pattern was learned. One distinction runs through all of them, and it is worth flagging now. Being satisfied with a relationship, and staying in it, are not the same variable.
The Definition
Causal Interdependence, Sustained
Start with a definition that is more careful than it looks. Kelley and colleagues supplied it in nineteen eighty-three. A relationship exists when two people are causally interdependent. Their thoughts, their feelings, and their behaviors. What each one does affects, and is affected by, what the other does. And crucially, that pattern persists across time. It is deliberately broad, covering friendships, partnerships, working relationships, and kin bonds. But it excludes brief encounters, where the interdependence is fleeting. That final clause about persistence is what does the excluding. It also sets the research agenda, in one move. A relationship is not a fixed object, but a dynamic system of mutual influence.
Social Exchange
Relationships as Rewards and Costs
The first framework arrived in nineteen fifty-nine, from Thibaut and Kelley. Social exchange theory, and it borrowed openly from economics. Interactions can be analyzed as exchanges of rewards and costs. Rewards include affection, support, status, sex, and money. Costs include time, conflict, and missed opportunities. Now, that framing sounds cynical, and students often resist it. To be precise, it does not claim that people feel like accountants. It claims that staying and leaving behave as if outcomes were being compared. Compared against a standard, which is a testable proposition. And the standards are where the theory gets interesting.
Two Standards
CL and CLalt
Outcomes are never judged in the abstract. They are compared against two standards, and the pair is the real contribution. The first is comparison level, usually written C L. It is the level of outcomes a person believes they deserve, or have come to expect. Shaped by prior experience, and by surrounding norms. Notice that this makes it calibrated, not absolute. The same objective treatment can read as generous to one person, and insulting to another. The second standard is comparison level for alternatives. The outcomes available in the best alternative relationship, or in being single. That one determines whether the relationship will be left. So the first standard governs satisfaction. And the second governs stability. Two questions, two answers.
The Prediction
Satisfaction and Stability Come Apart
Two standards yield a counter-intuitive prediction, and a well-supported one. Case one. Outcomes exceed the comparison level, so the relationship feels good. But the alternatives are very attractive, and outcomes fall below that second standard. A satisfying relationship, and it may still be unstable. Case two runs the other way. Outcomes fall below the comparison level, so the relationship feels bad. But the alternatives are worse than what is on offer here. A dissatisfying relationship, and it may well persist. The lesson is methodological, and it is easy to violate. Satisfaction and stability are distinct constructs, needing distinct predictors. Which means relationship quality surveys cannot forecast breakups on their own.
Equity
Fairness, Not Maximum Reward
Equity theory refines exchange theory by adding fairness. Walster, Walster, and Berscheid set it out in nineteen seventy-eight. The most stable relationships are not those that maximize rewards for one party. They are those where each partner's outcomes, divided by their inputs, are roughly equal. Both directions of imbalance cause trouble, which is the interesting part. Under-benefited partners give more than they receive. They typically respond with anger, and with withdrawal. Over-benefited partners receive more than they give. They typically respond with guilt, which is not comfortable either. Both deviations predict lower satisfaction and higher risk of dissolution. But equity has a shelf life, and that qualification matters. It weighs most in newer, less intimate relationships. In highly committed bonds, partners shift to a different accounting entirely.
The Third Factor
Why People Stay When They Should Leave
Now the factor both earlier frameworks miss. Rusbult identified it across two papers, in nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty-three. It explains why people remain when satisfaction is low. And when the alternatives look genuinely appealing. The factor is investment. Resources sunk into a relationship that cannot easily be recovered. Time is the obvious one, then shared possessions, mutual friends, and children. Then memories, which cannot be divided at all. And finally identity entwinement, which is the heaviest of the list. Time and possessions can at least be counted and split. Who you have become inside the relationship cannot be handed back.
The Investment Model
Commitment as a Joint Function
So the investment model makes commitment a joint function of three factors. Each one answers a different question about the relationship. Satisfaction is outcomes minus the comparison level. It predicts whether the partner enjoys being in the relationship. Quality of alternatives is the attractiveness of other partners, or of being single. It predicts whether leaving looks better than staying. Investment size is what would be lost upon dissolution. It predicts whether leaving is costly, practically and psychologically. Three questions: is it good, is there better, and what would it cost to go. The model has substantial empirical support, and not only in romance. It works for friendships, and for non-relational commitments such as jobs.
Why It Matters
Why 'Just Leave' Fails as Advice
The model earns its keep by predicting a genuinely puzzling pattern. People remaining in dissatisfying, imbalanced, or abusive relationships. High investment, combined with low perceived alternatives, sustains commitment. Even in the complete absence of satisfaction. Which explains why one piece of common advice reliably fails. Outsiders urge the dissatisfied partner to just leave. That treats the decision as governed by satisfaction alone. Two of the three factors have been left out of the conversation. Accumulated investment makes leaving costly, whatever the satisfaction level. So effective support has to do three things instead of one. Acknowledge the investments. Help assess the alternatives accurately. And reduce the practical costs of departure, rather than questioning why they remain.
Attachment
The Model You Bring With You
Attachment theory looks in a completely different direction. Exchange-based theories analyze present outcomes. Attachment traces adult intimacy back to internal working models. Models laid down in early caregiver relationships. Bowlby proposed the idea, in work from nineteen sixty-nine. Infants form representations of themselves as worthy of care, and of others as available. Ainsworth and colleagues identified three infant styles in nineteen seventy-eight: secure, anxious, and avoidant. Hazan and Shaver, in nineteen eighty-seven, found analogous patterns in adult romance. Secure adults are more comfortable with intimacy, and handle conflict better. Anxious adults crave closeness, but worry about abandonment. Avoidant adults value independence, and withdraw under emotional demand. Two cautions, though. The styles are continuous, not categorical. And they are partly modifiable, especially by relationships that disconfirm the old model.
Two Accounting Frames
Communal and Exchange Relationships
The last lens is about accounting, and it is subtler than it sounds. Clark and Mills drew it across two papers, in nineteen seventy-nine and ninety-three. The distinction is not about what people do. It is about how the doing is psychologically accounted for. In exchange relationships, with acquaintances or business partners, benefits expect a comparable return. Careful tracking is normal there, and nobody finds it rude. In communal relationships, benefits are given in response to need. Close family, romantic partners, best friends. With no expectation of immediate or symmetrical return. The damage happens when the frames get mismatched. I cooked, so it is your turn, is experienced as cold and corrosive. Applying communal rules to an exchange relationship, meanwhile, invites exploitation. The same behavior is appropriate or inappropriate depending on the frame.
Consolidate
Four Lenses, One Phenomenon
No single theory of relationships fully covers the field. That is not a failure. It is the honest position. Exchange-based theories illuminate the calculative side. Mate selection, conflict, and dissolution. Attachment theory illuminates the developmental roots of intimacy. And its emotional textures, which the exchange lens simply cannot see. The communal-exchange distinction illuminates something else again. The normative frames that make an exchange legible as generous, or as owed. Most working researchers treat these as complementary lenses. The phenomenon is too multi-faceted to reduce to any one of them. So the real skill is knowing which lens a given question calls for.
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