L7 - Theories Of Romantic Relationships: Rusbult’s Investment Model

Question 1

What is Rusbult’s investment model (2001)

Answer 1

• economic model examining a range of factors which have an effect of the amount of commitment that people put into their relationship and whether the relationship is likely to continue or not
• therefore it’s an extension of the social exchange theory
• model has 3 key factors which decide commitment level & whether to stay/leave relationship:
• satisfaction
• comparison/quality of alternatives
• investment size

Question 2

Satisfaction levels

Answer 2

• Satisfaction is the positive or negative emotional experiences that a person in a relationship feels
• it is influenced by extent to which their partner fulfills and gratifies their individual needs in the relationship e.g. domestic/sexual needs.
• Satisfaction levels can be compared against previous relationships, e.g. if someone feels more satisfied in their present relationship than they did in previous ones, then this is a positive outcome

Question 3

Comparison/quality of alternatives

Answer 3

• This is when a person might think about whether their important needs might be fulfilled better
  outside of the relationship.
• If there is an attractive alternative to the current relationship, the individual might leave the current relationship and not invest in it.
• If there are no good quality alternatives, the person might stay in their present relationship because there are no better options.
• The alternative option could even be that the person wants to be single, as this might seem a better alternative than being in a poor quality relationship

Question 4

Investment size

Answer 4

• Investment size contributes to the stability of the relationship.
• It is a measure of the importance and extent of the resources that are attached to the relationship and they could be lost if the relationship were to end, examples include mutual friends, home etc.
• Partners invest in their relationship and create a strong foundation for the future and this could be costly to break.
• Investment size is a powerful psychological force which motivates people to continue with their relationship, especially if they have put in a great deal of time and
  effort into the relationship.
• There are 2 types of investment

Question 5

Two types of investment

Answer 5

• Intrinsic investment - Direct investment such as money, energy, emotion
• Extrinsic investment Investment that was not present at the start of the relationship, but has developed over time e.g. children, shared memories

Question 6

Commitment level

Answer 6

• based on the consequences of satisfaction, alternatives & investment
• refers to whether the relationship will persist & continue
• if commitment is high & both partners are happy the relationship should continue & survive
• Commitment should involve equity (a fair input from both partners).
• There would be high losses if someone was to leave the relationship with the following traits, this would be very risky
• if there’s high satisfaction, low quality of alt/comparison & high investment this would lead to high commitment meaning that the person would continue to stay on the relationship

Question 7

Research supporting the investment model (AO1/AO3)

Answer 7

• Le & Agnew (2003)
  • Conducted a meta-analysis of 52 studies between 1970-1990s and explored the different factors of the investment model. There were 11,000 participants from 5 countries, UK, USA, Israel, Taiwan and the Netherlands
  • The findings showed that satisfaction, quality of alternatives and investment were correlated with commitment
  • Satisfaction and commitment were significantly correlated and had the strongest correlation of +0.68 out of all of the other factors
  • Quality of alternatives had the lowest correlation with commitment (-0.48)
  • Investment size was correlated with commitment +0.46
  • Those who had high commitment were likely to stay in the relationship, those with low commitment were likely to leave

Question 8

Evaluation of Rusbult’s investment model

Answer 8

strengths
- temporal validity
- research support
- explains behaviour
- explains commitment
weaknesses
- hard to measure
- gender differences

Question 9

Temporal validity

Answer 9

• high temporal validity as theory was discovered in 2001
• relatively recent, still likely to be applicable to today
  E.g. may explain homosexual relationships which is relevant today

Question 10

Research support

Answer 10

Research conducted by Van Lange (1997) supports Rusbult’s investment model when examining all of the key factors involved in the model. He studied students from Taiwan and from the Netherlands and found evidence that high commitment levels in a relationship were related to high satisfaction, low quality of alternatives and high investment size.

Question 11

Explains behaviour

Answer 11

• investment model is very useful because it can help explain the behaviour of infidelity which might occur if a person’s current relationship has low satisfaction and there is a high quality of alternative.
• Both of these factors would lessen the commitment levels and the present relationship is likely to end and not continue.
• Rusbult’s model can also explain why some people might stay in abusive relationships; the satisfaction is low and the victim should really leave the relationship.
• However, they might stay in the abusive relationship because there are a low quality of alternatives and the investment in the present relationship is too high, e.g. they have children

Question 12

Explains commitment

Answer 12

Rusbult’s investment model has the strength of being applied to explain the factor of commitment in a variety of different relationships. Rusbult administered Investment Model Scale questionnaires to participants in homosexual relationships and found that all factors of the investment model were found to be important when looking at commitment.

Question 13

Difficult to measure factors

Answer 13

• Rusbult’s model has been criticised because it is very difficult to measure the factors of commitment, satisfaction, investment and quality of alternatives.
• Rusbult responded to this criticism and constructed an investment model scale which could measure each of the key variables in a reliable and valid way.
• The research that Rusbult conducted using these scales involved self-reports, and this then created further problems of social desirability bias. For example, if pps were using the scale in terms of satisfaction, in order to look good, they may have pretended to be more satisfied than they were to
  show that they know how to maintain a relationship.

Question 14

Gender differences

Answer 14

• Lin (1995) criticises Rusbult’s model because it does not take into account gender differences that might exist when looking at relationships.
• Lin found that females tend to report higher satisfaction, poorer quality of alternatives, greater investment and stronger commitment in relationships compared to males.
• Therefore gender differences do exist