The Basic Principles of Social Exchange Theory
Social exchange theory is a theoretical framework developed by George Homans in 1958 and by John Thibaut and Harold Kelley in 1959, which analyzes human relationships as an exchange of rewards and costs. Its basic premise is that people are rational actors who try to maximize the rewards they obtain from a relationship and to minimize the costs. Rewards include affection, approval, a sense of security, sexual satisfaction, economic benefit, and social standing, that is, everything a person gains by being in the relationship. Costs include time, energy, restrictions on freedom, conflict, and emotional pain, everything the relationship takes out of them. Thibaut and Kelley introduced two standards of comparison. The first is the comparison level, abbreviated CL, meaning the level of reward a person expects from a relationship on the basis of past experience and social norms. The second is the comparison level for alternatives, CLalt, meaning the level of reward obtainable from the best available option outside the present relationship. Satisfaction with a relationship is determined by whether outcomes exceed CL, while the stability of the relationship is determined by whether outcomes exceed CLalt, and the two questions can have different answers.
How the Theory Developed, and the Criticisms Against It
Social exchange theory developed into Rusbult's investment model, published in 1980. Rusbult added investment size as a third factor and showed that the greater the resources a person has put into a relationship, whether time, emotion, or shared property, the more commitment is maintained even when satisfaction is low. Clark and Mills, in 1979, drew a further distinction between exchange relationships, in which a return is expected for what one gives, and communal relationships, in which one responds to the other person's needs, and showed that in intimate relationships the communal principle applies rather than the exchange principle, so that partners attend to what the other needs rather than keeping a ledger. The criticisms of the theory can be summarized in four points: it reduces human relationships too far toward economic transaction; it cannot account for altruism or self-sacrifice, where a person knowingly accepts cost for the other's sake; it fails to take cultural differences into account and is biased toward individualistic cultures; and it makes too little of the role of emotion, treating feeling as a reward to be tallied rather than as something that shapes how rewards and costs are perceived in the first place.
Social Exchange Theory in Compatibility Assessment
Seen through social exchange theory, compatibility comes into view as a question of what rewards two people are able to provide each other. In terms of the Big Five, the rewards and the costs associated with each factor can be specified. A person high in extraversion provides social stimulation and energy, but this can become a cost for a partner who needs time alone. A person high in agreeableness provides warmth and cooperativeness, while a reluctance to assert their own position can become a cost. What is worth watching is the balance of the rewards the two of you provide each other. A pattern where only one of you keeps supplying them is surprisingly hard to see from the inside. Where this framework tends to break down, though, is less the arithmetic of balance than a disagreement about what counts as a reward in the first place. If one partner counts taking on the housework as the largest gift while the other counts spoken consideration, both will arrive at the conclusion that they are the one giving more. When the sense of a bad bargain starts to surface, what there is room to check is not the ledger but what each of you has been writing in the reward column.