Intimate

Relationships

Rowland S.Miller

习读专用，不作商用，如侵联删。

C H A P T E R 6

Interdependency

（I）

Social Exchange ◆ The Economies of Relationships

◆ Are We Really This Greedy? ◆ The Nature of Commitment

◆ For Your Consideration ◆ Chapter Summary

If you’ve been in a relationship for a while, why are you staying in that relation- ship? Are you obligated to continue it for some reason? Are you simply waiting for something better to come along? Hopefully, your current relationships have been so rewarding that none of these questions will seem to apply. However, all of them provide the focus for this chapter, which will take an economic view

of our dealings with others.

Our subject will be interdependency, our reliance on others and theirs on us for valuable interpersonal rewards. I’ll examine why we stay in some relationships and leave others and ponder the nature of lasting relationships. I’ll say nothing about love; that’s another chapter. Instead, our focus will be the spreadsheets with which we tally the profits and losses of our interactions with others. You may not yet have thought of yourself as an interpersonal accountant, but doing so provides powerful insights into the workings of close relationships.

6.1 SOCIAL EXCHANGE

Interdependency theories assume that people are like shoppers who are brows- ing at an interpersonal shopping mall. We’re all looking for good buys. We seek interactions with others that provide maximum reward at minimum cost, and we stay only with those partners who provide sufficient profit (Van Lange & Rusbult, 2012). But because everybody behaves this way, both partners in a relationship must be profiting to their satisfaction or the relationship is unlikely to continue.

From this perspective, social life entails the mutual exchange of desirable rewards with others, a process called social exchange. There are several differ- ent social exchange theories, but the ideas introduced by John Thibaut and Harold Kelley (1959; Kelley & Thibaut, 1978)—now known as interdependence theory—are most often used by relationship scientists, so I’ll feature them here. Let’s consider the central elements of social exchange.

Rewards and Costs

The rewards of interactions are the gratifying experiences and commodities we obtain through our contact with others. They come in very different forms ranging from impersonal benefits, such as the directions you can get from strangers when you’re lost, to personal intimacies, such as acceptance and support from someone you love. I’ll use the term reward to refer to anything within an interaction that is desirable and welcome and that brings enjoyment or fulfillment to the recipient.

In contrast, costs are punishing, undesirable experiences. They can involve financial expenditures, such as buying drinks for your date, or actual injuries, such as split lips. However, some of the most important costs of intimate inter- action are psychological burdens: uncertainty about where a relationship is headed, frustration over your partner’s imperfections, and regret about all the things you don’t get to do because you’re in that relationship (Sedikides et al., 1994). All of the diverse consequences of interaction that are frustrating or dis- tressing are costs.

We’ll summarize the rewards and costs associated with a particular inter- action with the term outcome, which describes the net profit or loss a person encounters, all things considered. Adding up all the rewards and costs involved,

Outcomes = Rewards - Costs

Obviously, if an interaction is more rewarding than punishing, a positive outcome results. But remember, the social exchange perspective asserts that people want the best possible outcomes. The simple fact that your interactions are profitable doesn’t mean that they are good enough to keep you coming back to that partner. Indeed, one of the major insights of interdependence theory is its suggestion that whether your outcomes are positive or negative isn’t nearly as important as how they compare to two criteria with which we evaluate the outcomes we receive. The first criterion involves our expectations, and the sec- ond involves our perceptions of how well we could manage without our cur- rent partner.

What Do We Expect from Our Relationships?

Interdependence theory assumes that each of us has an idiosyncratic comparison level (which I’ll abbreviate as CL) that describes the value of the outcomes that we believe we deserve in our dealings with others. Our CLs are based on our past experiences. People who have a history of highly rewarding partnerships are likely to have high CLs, meaning that they expect and feel they deserve very good outcomes now. In contrast, people who have had troublesome relation- ships in the past are likely to expect less and to have lower CLs.

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A person’s comparison level represents his or her neutral point on a contin- uum that ranges all the way from abject misery to ecstatic delight. That makes our CLs the standards by which our satisfaction with a relationship is measured. If the outcomes you receive exceed your CL, you’re happy; you’re getting more than the minimum payoff you expect from interaction with others. Just how happy you are depends on the extent to which your outcomes surpass your expectations; if your outcomes are considerably higher than your CL, you’ll be very satisfied. On the other hand, if your outcomes fall below your CL, you’re dissatisfied even if your outcomes are still pretty good and you’re doing bet- ter than most people. This is a significant point: Even if you are still making a profit on your dealings with others, you may not be happy if the profit isn’t big enough to meet your expectations. If you’re a rich, spoiled celebrity, for instance, you may have very high expectations and be rather dissatisfied with a fabulous partner who would bedazzle the rest of us.

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So, satisfaction in close relationships doesn’t depend simply on how good our outcomes are in an absolute sense; instead, satisfaction derives from how our outcomes compare to our expectations—our comparison levels—like this:

Outcomes - CL = Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction

How Well Could We Do Elsewhere?

However, another important assumption of interdependence theory is that satisfaction is not the only, or even the major, influence that determines how long relationships last. Whether or not we’re happy, we use a second criterion, a comparison level for alternatives (or CLalt), to determine whether we could be doing even better somewhere else. Your CLalt describes the outcomes you’d receive by leaving your current relationship and moving to the best alternative partnership or situation you have available. And if you’re a good accountant, you can see that our CLalts are also the lowest levels of outcome we will toler- ate from our present partners. Here’s why: If other relationships promise better profits than we currently receive, we’re likely to leave our present partners and enjoy those big- ger rewards. It wouldn’t matter if we’re currently satisfied with what we’re getting; we’d still go because, according to interdependency theory, we always want the best deal we can get. On the other hand, even if we are unhappy in a current relation- ship, we won’t leave it unless a better alternative presents itself. This is a very important point, which helps explain why people stay in relationships that make them miserable: Even though they’re unhappy where they are, they think they’d be worse off if they left. They won’t go anywhere until they think a better situation awaits them elsewhere (Edwards et al., 2011). This idea—that our contentment with a relationship is not the major determinant of whether we stay in it or go—is one of interdependence theory’s most interest- ing insights.

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Thus, our CLalts determine our dependence on our relationships. Whether or not we’re satisfied, if we believe that we’re already doing as well as we possibly can, we depend on our present partners and are unlikely to leave them (Ellis et al., 2002). Moreover, the greater the gap between our current outcomes and our poorer alternatives, the more dependent we are. If our current outcomes are only a little better than those that await us elsewhere, we don’t need our current partners very much and may leave if our alternatives improve.

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But would you really leave a satisfying relationship? Presumably, you would, if the alternatives luring you away were genuinely better than what you have now. To keep things simple when you consider this, think of your CLalt as the global outcome, the net profit or loss, that a person believes will result from switching partners, all things considered (Kelley, 2002). If the whole process of ending a present partnership and moving to an alternative promises better outcomes, a person should move. It’s just economic good sense.

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A problem, of course, is that these are difficult calculations to make. There’s a lot to consider. On the one hand, we need to assess the desirability and avail- ability of the alternative partners that could lure us away, and going it alone— being without a partner—is also an option to ponder. When other partners or simple solitude seem attractive, our CLalts go up. However, we’ll also incur a variety of costs by leaving an existing relationship, and they can dramatically affect the net profit to be gained by moving elsewhere. For instance, Caryl Rusbult demonstrated that one’s investments in a present relationship, the things one would lose if the relationship were to end, are also important influ- ences on one’s decision to stay or go (e.g., Rusbult et al., 2012). The investments a person leaves behind can either be tangible goods, such as furniture and dishes you have to split with your ex, or intangible psychological benefits, such as love and respect from in-laws and friends (Goodfriend & Agnew, 2008). An unhappy spouse may refrain from filing for divorce, for example, not because she has no other options but because she doesn’t want to accept the potential costs of con- fused children, disappointed parents, and befuddled friends. All of these would reduce the global desirability of leaving and, thus, reduce one’s CLalt.

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Another complication is that a person’s CLalt is what he or she thinks it is, and a variety of factors can influence people’s perceptions of their alternatives. Self-esteem, for one. When people don’t like themselves, they doubt their desir- ability (Swann & Buhrmester, 2012) and underestimate their prospects with other partners. Access to information affects one’s CLalt, too. If you become a stay-at-home parent who doesn’t work, you’ll probably have much more lim- ited information about potential alternatives than you would have if you went to work in a large city every day (Rusbult & Martz, 1995); as a result, you’ll have a lower CLalt than you would have if you got out and looked around.

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Indeed, desirable alternatives will only enhance your CLalt if you are aware of them, and if you’re content with your current partners, you may not pay much attention to people who could be compelling rivals to your existing relationships. In fact, people who are satisfied with their existing partnerships are relatively uninterested in looking around to see how they could be doing elsewhere. As a result, they think they have lower CLalts than do those who pay more attention to their alternatives (Miller, 2008). This may be important. College students who keep track of their options and monitor their alternatives with care switch romantic partners more often than do those who pay their alternatives less heed (Miller, 2008).

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These results mean that although interdependence theory treats satisfac- tion and dependence as relatively independent influences on relationships, they are actually correlated. As an old cliché suggests, the grass may be greener in other relationships, but if you’re happy with your current partner, you’re less likely to notice. Still, there’s wisdom in remembering that satisfaction with a relationship has only a limited role in a person’s decision to stay in it or go. Consider the usual trajectory of a divorce: Spouses who divorce have usually been unhappy for quite some time before they decide to separate (Lucas, 2007). What finally prompts them to act? Something changes: Their CLalts finally come to exceed their current outcomes (Albrecht & Kunz, 1980). Things may get so bad that their outcomes in the marriage fall below those that are avail- able in alternative options that used to seem inadequate. Or the apparent costs of ending the marriage may decrease (which raises one’s CLalt): Because the spouses have been unhappy for so long, for instance, their kids, parents, and pastor may change their minds and support a divorce for the first time. Or the apparent rewards of leaving increase, perhaps because they have saved some money or obtained a degree. (This also raises one’s CLalt.) The bottom line is that people don’t divorce when they get unhappy; they divorce when, one way or the other, their prospects finally seem brighter elsewhere.

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So, if we remember that CLalt is a multifaceted judgment encompassing both the costs of leaving—such as lost investments—and the enticements offered by others, we get:

Let’s review. The three key elements of social exchange are people’s outcomes, comparison levels (CLs), and comparison levels for alternatives (CLalts). The net profits or losses people receive from interaction are their outcomes. When their outcomes exceed their expectations, or CLs, they are satisfied; how- ever, if they are not doing as well as they expect (that is, when their outcomes are lower than their CLs), they are dissatisfied. In addition, when people’s cur- rent outcomes are better than those they could get elsewhere (that is, when their outcomes exceed their CLalts), they depend on their current partners and are unlikely to leave. However, if their outcomes from their current partners get worse than those that can be readily obtained elsewhere (and their outcomes fall below their CLalts), they will be independent and will be likely to depart.

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Four Types of Relationships

Let’s see how these calculations combine to define the types of relationships people encounter. CLs, CLalts, and the outcomes people experience can all range from low to high along a continuum of outcome quality. Interdepen- dence theory suggests that when we consider all three of these factors simulta- neously, four different broad types of relationships result.

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Consider what happens when people’s outcomes exceed both their CLs and their CLalts. They’re getting more from their partners than they expect and they believe they’re doing better than they could anywhere else. So, they’re happy and (as far as they’re concerned) their relationships are stable. They’re not going anywhere. This pleasant situation is depicted in Figure 6.1 in two different ways. In one case, a person’s CL is higher than his or her CLalt whereas in the other case the reverse is true. In these and all the other examples I’ll explain, the spe- cific amount of satisfaction (or dependence) a person feels depends on the extent to which CL (or CLalt) differs from the person’s current outcomes. However, in both graphs A1 and A2—and this is the point I wish to make—the person is in a happy, stable relationship. I showed you both graphs to demonstrate that, in terms of the simple classifications illustrated in Figure 6.1, it doesn’t matter whether CL is higher than CLalt or vice versa. Even if they’re exactly the same, the same broad category will apply; if the person’s current outcomes surpass both CL and CLalt, that person will be content and unlikely to leave.1

1 This is the type of relationship that I hope you’ll settle into someday (if you haven’t already). You’ll be satisfied and you’ll believe that you’re doing better with your partner than you could be with anyone else. And if your partner feels the same way—if you both need each other and are happily interdependent—you’ll both be motivated to nurture your relationship to keep your good thing going. One can’t do better than that.