Social exchange theory Flashcards
What does SET predict
We stay only so long as this relationship is more rewarding than the alternatives
Who proposed SET
Thibault and Kelley
Rewards, costs and profits
Minimax principle
- Maximise rewards (love, companionship, pleasure)
- Minimise costs (time, stress)
- a relationship is profitable if the rewards exceed the costs
Homans
Borrowed concepts from economics and from SKinner’s theory of operant conditioning
Costs
Money, time, emotional costs produced by loss, betrayal and jealousy
Rewards
Anything that makes us feel valued; money, status, attention
Outcome
Outcome = rewards - costs
Comparison level
The amount of reward you believe you deserve to get from the relationship, influenced by previous experience and social norms
- Link with self esteem
Comparison level of alternatives
Whether someone can get greater outcome in another relationship
Duck
The CLalt we adopt will depend on the state of our current relationship
Stages of relationship development
Sampling, bargaining, commitment, institutional
Sampling
Experiment with rewards and costs in our relationships
Bargaining
We negotiate rewards and costs at the start of a relationship
Commitment
Rewards increase and costs lesson so the relationship stabilises
Institutionalism
Normative rewards and costs are well established
Eval - research support
- Strength
- Research studies
- Kurdek asked gay, lesbian and heterosexual couples to complete questionnaire
- Measures relationship commitment and SET variables
- More committed partners perceived most rewards and fewest costs
- Research findings match predictions - validity of theory in gay, lesbian and heterosexual
Eval - counterpoint
- Studies ignore equity
- What matters is not just balance of rewards and costs
- Instead - partners’ perceptions that this is far
- SET is a limited explanation - cannot account for a significant proportion of research findings on relationships
Eval - direction of cause and effect
- Limitation
- Claims dissatisfaction arises after relationship stops being profitable
- Argyle - we don’t monitor costs and rewards or consider alternatives until after we are dissatisfied
- When satisfied with relationship and committed to it - do not notice alternatives
- Considering costs/ alternatives is caused by dissatisfaction rather than the reverse
- Miller - those rating themselves as being in highly committed relationship spent less time looking at images of attractive people, good predictor of relationship continuing
Eval - vague concepts
- Limitation
- SET deals are vague and hard to quantify
- Real-world psychological rewards and costs are subjective and harder to define
- Rewards and costs vary a lot from one person to another
- Concept of comparison levels - unclear what the values of CL and Clalt must be before dissatisfaction
- Theory is difficult to test in a valid way
Eval - inappropriate central assumptions
- SET assumes relationships are economic in nature
- Clark and Mills - cannot apply this to romantic relations as they are communal-based
- Romantic partners do not ‘keep score’ - would destroy trust
Eval - explain abusive relationships
- Strength - explain why people stay in abusive relationships
- Explanatory strength of the theory
Practical applications
