Social Exchange Theory

The social exchange theory posits that human being sexuality can be analyzed with the concepts of economic science – that people attempt to maximize their rewards while minimizing costs, that interaction with others is a series of exchanges, and that people who receive rewards experience obligated to reciprocate (Sprecher, 1998).

From: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition) , 2015

Exchange: Social

Karen S. Cook , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2d Edition), 2015

Abstruse

Social exchange theory is 1 of the major theories of social interaction in the social sciences. Homans, Blau, and Emerson were the central theorists who developed the original theories of social exchange. Theoretical and empirical developments include the extension of their work to the analysis of power and dependence, social networks, reciprocity, fairness, social cohesion, and solidarity. The piece of work on social commutation in sociology has clear links to research on social uppercase, particularly work on networks, norms, and trust. Contributors to this tradition of research include Cook, Friedkin, Lawler, Molm, Willer, Yamagishi, and their collaborators.

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Dark Triad: The "Dark Side" of Human Personality

Peter Thousand. Jonason , James P. Middleton , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

Social Exchange Theory

Social Substitution Theory proposes that behaviors can be thought of as the outcome of toll-do good analyses by people attempting to interact with gild and the environment. If a person believes that they are able to extract more of a advantage through a behavior than they lose by performing it, and so the person will perform the behavior. Conversely, when the person feels that the cost will outweigh the benefit, the beliefs will non be performed. If someone does non value maintaining a relationship, or is distrustful and does not expect others to follow through with the advantage, so the balance would be shifted toward anticipating a lower worth to whatever social substitution. That is, the relative costs would be higher, and the anticipated rewards would be lower. Such a mind-set could produce a short-term orientation favoring immediate, bodacious rewards, and would elicit the socially aversive behaviors characteristic of the Dark Triad. All the same, while we hold that at that place are costs and benefits, nosotros are suspicious of credible the Neo-Classical Economics supposition that humans are rational, calculating animals.

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Ethnic Intermarriage

Delia Furtado , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

Theories of Union

Social substitution theory was the first framework developed for understanding intermarriage decisions ( Davis, 1941; Merton, 1941). It implies that if whites face college social costs of interracial, blackness–white marriage, as compared to blacks, so the white spouse must be compensated for such marriages to actually occur. This compensation might often come in the form of college socioeconomic status of the blackness spouse.

Empirical analyses of social exchange yield mixed results. Because taboos against interracial marriage have diminished greatly through the years (Wang, 2012), some of the discrepancies beyond studies are due to differences in when the study was conducted. However, even when using the same data source, researchers arrive at divergent conclusions because of differences in empirical arroyo (Gullickson and Fu, 2010; Kalmijn, 2010; Rosenfeld, 2005, 2010). Regardless of methodology, the degree of empirical support for social exchange theory differs across racial groups (Fryer, 2007; Qian, 1999).

The theory of marriage developed by Gary Becker (1973) predicts exchange on some characteristics but matching on others. He conceptualized households as pocket-sized firms producing 'commodities' such equally children, wellness, companionship, food, and clean apparel. Since these commodities typically require money and time to produce, the model implies exchanges between high-wage men who specialize in the labor marketplace and low-wage women who specialize in domestic skills. The theory also implies matching on characteristics when these matches would brand the couple more than efficient at producing bolt. For case, spouses with the same ethnic groundwork tin can more efficiently 'produce' children with ethnic traits.

David Lam's theory of marriage (1988) focuses on couples' articulation consumption, as opposed to production, of household goods. The theory predicts that optimal matches are fabricated based on similar demands for household public goods. Because many of the goods shared among family unit members are ethnicity-based (ethnic traits in children too every bit ethnic meals and vacations to the home land), then it is optimal for individuals with similar demands for these appurtenances to ally. Given the emergence of labor-saving household technologies such as microwaves and dishwashers as well every bit a functioning service industry that enables families to outsource many household activities, today'due south couples seem to form family based more on consumption complementarities of the type proposed past Lam than on production complementarities proposed past Becker (Stevenson and Wolfers, 2007). All the same, all three spousal relationship models either directly imply or are consistent with high rates of indigenous endogamy and can provide insights into the types of people that are most probable to intermarry.

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Sexuality, Theories of

Elke D. Reissing , Heather VanZuylen , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

The Social Exchange Theory

The social commutation theory has been applied to many different situations; in the context of sexuality, the theory aims at explaining why two particular people may appoint in sexual behavior, while another two may non. The theory therefore places the focus predominantly on the relational context. It is placed here under social theories to highlight the strong influence of interpersonal ability dynamics, gendered power in gild, and because information technology takes an interpersonal orientation in analysis; however, it is also compatible with evolutionary mate-option strategies. The social substitution theory posits that human sexuality can exist analyzed with the concepts of economic science – that people attempt to maximize their rewards while minimizing costs, that interaction with others is a series of exchanges, and that people who receive rewards feel obligated to reciprocate ( Sprecher, 1998).

Within heterosexual culture, the expectation is that men want sex more than women and thus women have the ability to grant access to something desired. This creates what is referred to as the Principle of Least Involvement (Waller and Hill, 1951), which stipulates that the party that has the greater interest in an upshot has less power in negotiations. Thus, women have more power in sexual negotiations and may request additional rewards in exchange, including love, status, money, and influence (Baumeister and Mendoza, 2011). Restricting the availability of sex and increasing its value is therefore of particular importance in cultures where women are disadvantaged in access to income, pedagogy, and political representation. Indeed, Baumeister and Mendoza (2011) constitute that of 37 countries, those which had greater gender equality reported increased coincidental sexual activity, less forbearance promotion, more premarital sexual activity, and younger historic period of outset intercourse. Thus, every bit predicted, when women have access to resources through nonsexual means, the 'cost' of sexual activeness is lower and sexual activity is less restricted.

On an interpersonal level, Byers and Wang (2004) reported that people were more likely to stay in a relationship where they establish that the rewards were high and the costs were low. The researchers further noted that partner satisfaction and relationship stability benefited from both partners experiencing a remainder of rewards and costs. If one partner felt the other was benefiting more, then for this partner, the temptation to seek rewards outside the relationship increased. This temptation was decreased however, if few or no more highly-seasoned alternatives existed (meetSatisfaction and Delivery in Long-Term Heterosexual Relationships).

The social exchange theory has been criticized on several fronts. One major obstacle in the empirical evaluation of the concept is the subjective nature of costs and rewards, which may differ in value between different people, over time, or through comparisons with other people or rewards. The social substitution model also typically tests how exchanges impact relationships and sexual variables; meanwhile, very little research has been conducted on how the quality of a relationship affects substitution variables. The social exchange theory nevertheless demonstrates that sexual decision-making is grounded in a broader social context that regulates the risks and benefits of sexual activity. Information technology also demonstrates how broad social movements, such as gender equality and feminism, can alter the sexual mural and affect conclusion-making.

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Social Psychology, Theories of

Southward.T. Fiske , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

4.ii Controlling, Betwixt Individuals

Various social exchange theories concern effect-oriented standards for enacting and judging relationships. Homans'south distributive justice applied elementary principles of operant (Skinnerian) behaviorism to social interdependence, holding that individuals look rewards proportionate to costs. From this came equity theory (Adams, Walster (subsequently Hatfield), Walster, and Berscheid) that argued that people seek fair ratios of outcome to investment. Although couched in reward–price terms, inequity theoretically relates to racket (Sect. 3.one), creating a drive to reduce it. The exchange thought in relationships developed into interdependence theory (Kelley and Thibaut), that posits that human interactions follow from degrees, symmetries, bases, and kinds of dependence. In Levinger's stage theory of relationships, people begin with a cost–do good analysis. Whether close relationships switch (Sect. 2.2) or not (Sect. 4.2) to a nonexchange (i.e., communal) orientation, people in relationships exercise command their own and the other'southward outcomes, addressed by theories of intent attribution (Sect. iii.i), emotion in relationships (Berscheid), and accommodation to disruption (Rusbult). Even outside close relationships, outcome dependence motivates individuation (Fiske), undercutting stereotypes. Control over one'south outcomes appears in a cost–reward model (Dovidio, Piliavin) of helping.

Although motives to command one's outcomes theoretically underlie most positive relationships, they theoretically also underlie assailment. Excessive control over another person, to obtain desired outcomes, motivates instrumental aggression (Geen), post-obit the frustration–aggression hypothesis (Dollard, Miller, Doob, Mowrer, and Sears). Other formulations comport an explicitly cognitive neoassociationist analysis (Berkowitz) of aggressive patterns. Lack of command, brought on by environmental stressors (Anderson) enhances aggression, as does social learning (Bandura), whereby people are socialized to imitate successful aggressive acts.

Incentives motivated the earliest frameworks for persuasive advice (Hovland, Janis, and Kelley), too every bit more contempo principles of compliance involving scarcity (Cialdini) as a threat to control over outcomes.

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Part-Fourth dimension Work

Neil Conway , in Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology, 2004

5.four Social Exchange and the Psychological Contract

The two exchange-based approaches of the psychological contract and social substitution theory have besides been used to explicate different attitudes and behaviors beyond work statuses. It has been argued that there are a number of factors that bear upon the exchange of contributions for inducements across part-time and full-time employees. For case, office-time employees receive fewer inducements such equally benefits, job variety, and opportunities for advancement; role-fourth dimension employees accept lower expectations about what they should get from the organisation; and part-fourth dimension employees are more likely to be subject field to "Theory X"-type management. These factors will have the effect of creating a perception of perceived inequity or psychological contract violation across piece of work statuses, and they are more likely to lead to role-time employees developing economic relationships, rather than social exchange relationships, with employers. This, in plow, will affect result attitude and behaviors such as job satisfaction and organizational citizenship beliefs.

Although some of the assumptions behind the social substitution-type approaches are questionable (e.k., that organizations treat office-time employees less favorably, that office-time employees expect less from their work), these approaches take been empirically tested and constitute to at least partially explain attitude and behavior differences across function-fourth dimension and full-time employees.

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Social responsibility, social marketing role, and societal attitudes

Rasa Smaliukiene , Salvatore Monni , in Free energy Transformation Towards Sustainability, 2020

Step 3: exchange

As was already discussed, voluntary exchange is a mainstay of social marketing. According to the commutation theory, social marketing has to offer users benefits in substitution for their behavioral modify. Giorgi et al. (2016) point out that they agree to change their beliefs toward more than sustainable energy utilisation in commutation for lower cost, convenience, and lifestyle selection. Respectively, marketers have to consider the alternatives every bit to what will motivate users to change their behavior and what should exist offered as a value in exchange. The only concern is that the meaning of value is different for different segments. The exchange in free energy consumption can exist motivated by self-interest, social norms, or concern for the common good. While environmentalists "tin leave condolement and cleanliness backside in the pursuit of a gimmicky natural purity" (RCZM, 2019), the disinterested change their behavior solely because of toll saving. This, consequently, leads to different proposals for behavioral change. They can be very simple or very complex depending on the segment and its willingness to alter, i.due east., adjust the temperature, apply more efficient vehicles, avoid unnecessary flights, manage energy better, recycle more than, waste less food, etc. (Jonkhof andvan der Kooij, 2019).

Giorgi et al. (2016) provide a comprehensive list of proposals how to offer value to a different target audience based on their attitudes and preferences. For environmentalists, they suggest specific measures that would help incorporate changes into their lifestyles, while for the disinterested price saving has to be the central entry point to stimulate their behavioral modify. Despite dissimilar attitudes and preferences (Ramos et al., 2015), research results testify that all segments are more than willing to participate in substitution when its value is clear.

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Experiments on Substitution Relations and Exchange Networks in Folklore

Linda D. Molm , in Laboratory Experiments in the Social Sciences (Second Edition), 2014

A Basic Concepts and Assumptions

Social exchange occurs between two or more actors who are dependent on ane another for valued outcomes. Social commutation theories presume that actors are motivated to obtain more of the outcomes that they value and others command, that actors provide each other with these valued benefits through some form of social exchange, and that exchanges betwixt the same actors are recurring over time (rather than "one-shot" transactions). These scope assumptions are shared by most theories of exchange and must be met in the experimental settings in which they are tested.

The simplest form of social exchange involves just two actors, A and B, each of whom possesses at least one resource that the other values. The actors can be either individuals or corporate groups (e.yard., organizations), and the resources can include not only tangible appurtenances and services but as well capacities to provide socially valued outcomes such every bit approval or status. In exchange experiments, the actors are always individual persons, merely sometimes they are given roles every bit representatives of organizations. Substitution theories brand no assumptions about what actors value and assume that interaction is unaffected by actors' values or the resources exchanged; this makes them broadly applicable to social relations regardless of content and means that experimental tests of exchange theories tin use any resource of known value. Some exchange theories assume "rational" actors who cognitively counterbalance the potential benefits and costs of culling partners and actions and brand choices that maximize outcomes; others adopt a learning model that assumes actors respond to consequences of past choices, without conscious weighing of alternatives and without necessarily maximizing outcomes.

As Figure 9.one illustrates, social commutation can have several distinct forms: direct exchange; generalized exchange; and productive substitution. In relations of direct exchange between two actors, each actor'south outcomes depend straight on another actor'due south behaviors; that is, A provides value to B, and B to A, as in the instance of two co-workers helping each other with various projects. As Figure 9.1a shows, such direct exchange relations tin can occur either in isolated dyads or inside larger networks. In relations of generalized exchange among three or more actors, each thespian gives benefits to some other and eventually receives benefits from some other, but not from the same histrion. Consequently, the reciprocal dependence is indirect; a benefit received by B from A is non reciprocated straight by B'southward giving to A merely, rather, indirectly by B's giving to another thespian in the network. Some forms of indirect exchange (due east.yard., the classic Kula band) accept a specific circular grade, as shown in Figure ix.1b. Other examples, such as donating blood and reviewing journal manuscripts, exercise not. Finally, in productive exchange (Figure 9.1c), both actors in the relation must contribute in order for either to obtain benefits (due east.g., co-authoring a book).

Figure 9.1. Direct, generalized, and productive exchange structures.

Although generalized exchange was a particular interest of early anthropological commutation theorists, the study of directly substitution relations has dominated enquiry and theorizing in folklore until quite recently. Direct exchanges can be negotiated or reciprocal in form; both have been the subject of long-term research programs. In negotiated exchange, actors jointly negotiate the terms of an agreement (commonly binding) through a series of offers and counteroffers. Each agreement comprises a detached transaction that provides benefits for both actors. In reciprocal exchange, actors perform individual acts that do good another, such as giving assist or advice, without negotiation and without knowing whether, when, or to what extent the other will reciprocate. Exchange relations develop when beneficial acts prompt reciprocal benefit.

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Applications in Diverse Populations

Charlotte J. Patterson , in Comprehensive Clinical Psychology, 1998

ix.16.3.3 Power and Division of Labor

How should power be allocated in a couple? The great bulk of lesbian and gay couples experience that an equal residuum of power would be desirable (Peplau & Cochran, 1990), but not all study that they attain this ideal state. In Peplau and Cochran'due south report, only 59% of lesbians, 38% of gay men, 48% of heterosexual women, and 40% of heterosexual men reported that the balance of power in their current human relationship was exactly equal. Others have found that majorities of gay every bit well as lesbian couples written report equal power (see Peplau et al., 1996).

When power is unequal in a human relationship, which partner has more ability in an intimate human relationship, and why? Social exchange theory predicts that the partner with greater personal resources (e.g., income, education) should take greater ability ( Peplau, 1991), and results of a number of studies have supported this view. For instance, Harry (1984) constitute that older, wealthier men tended to accept more power in their intimate relationships, and Caldwell and Peplau (1984), in a written report of young lesbians, reported that wealthier and better educated women tended to take more ability than their partners. Blumstein and Schwartz (1983) constitute that the partner with greater fiscal resources had more power in money management issues in gay, married heterosexual, and unmarried (just cohabiting) heterosexual couples, just not in lesbian couples. Whether or not relative financial resource affect the residue of power in lesbian couples remains an open question (meet Peplau et al., 1996).

Other predictions from substitution theory have also received support from empirical research (Kurdek, 1995; Peplau, 1991; Peplau et al., 1996). In social substitution theory, the principle of least involvement states that when ane person is more dependent or involved than the other, the more dependent partner is expected to take less power (Peplau, 1991). In other words, the person who is less interested in continuing the relationship has more power. Consistent with this view, Caldwell and Peplau (1984) found correlations between unequal interest and unequal power amongst lesbian couples. Overall, equally predicted past social exchange theory, the adult female who was less involved in the relationship had more power.

Although many people who are unfamiliar with lesbian and gay couples presume that, in aforementioned-sex activity couples, one partner plays a male person and one a female role, inquiry has consistently found that this is only rarely the instance (Kurdek, 1995; Peplau et al., 1996). For case, Bong and Weinberg (1978) reported that the majority of lesbians and gay men they studied reported that they shared domestic tasks equally. When they were asked whether one partner does the feminine tasks while the other does the masculine tasks, about 90% of lesbians and gay men said that this was non the example in their households. Kurdek (1993) reported egalitarian divisions of labor amongst lesbian and gay couples, and Patterson (1995d) reported that in a sample of lesbian couples with children, nearly family and household tasks were shared equally.

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Social Psychology, Sociological

Southward. Stryker , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

3.2 The Group Processes Perspective

Group processes work reflects diverse substantive interests with a common focus on interaction in social groups or social networks. The interaction processes attended to include: cooperation; competition; conflict; disharmonize resolution; social exchange; inequality; bargaining; ability, condition, and influence processes; procedural and distributive justice and injustice; the resolution of social dilemmas; the emergence of social structures from interaction; and the reproduction of interaction processes past social structures deriving from them. According to Karen Melt, a social interdependence theme integrates these, as practice ideas about how group processes piece of work relate to the general sociological enterprise: group and network interaction processes provide the foundations of macrosociological theory; theories developed on interacting individuals apply to corporate or collective actors; group- and network-based interaction mediates the relation of individual to society. Besides, group process students have a mutual lineage and hold similar beliefs about how to do inquiry and build theory.

That lineage includes Georg Simmel on implications of social forms for interaction; George Homans' commutation theory built upon principles of economics and operant workout psychology; Robert F. Bale's research on groups resolving tasks; 'modest groups' research; theoretical also equally experimental economics work on bargaining and reward allocation; and game-theoretic inspired research in political scientific discipline and psychology. Richard Emerson is peculiarly of import to this lineage, developing a social exchange theory escaping the limitations of Homans' strict behaviorism and extending exchange theory to deal with exchange networks.

This lineage led to experimentation and mathematical modeling of interaction processes. The focus on experimentation enabled programmatic inquiry, an platonic carried out more in practice by group process researchers than by other SSP researchers. Group process researchers have provided models of such inquiry, edifice modest theories to explain given facts, testing the theories experimentally, discovering flaws in the fit of theory, revising theory to accommodate new data, in an ongoing process of theory building and theory testing.

Further attention is express to ii topics, social exchange and status structures, epitomizing theoretical themes of the grouping processes perspective and its programmatic research emphasis. Contemporary social substitution theory starts with actors' interdependency: people demand others for, and provide others with, things they value and so engage in social exchange. Exchange occurs in situations of mutual dependence; persons act to increase positively valued outcomes and decrease negatively valued outcomes, exchange relations with specific others are repeated, and satiation and marginal utility apply to valued outcomes. Commutation networks—chains of exchange relations—are basic to sociological exchange theory and SSP considering they bridge to larger social structures. From here, network theory and inquiry proliferate, extending to corporate actors, the function of power in facilitating or impeding exchanges across networks, the impact on exchanges of negative (competitive) or positive (noncompetitive) network connections, the emergence of norms in exchange networks, etc.

Electric current work on status structures builds on expectation states theory, adult by Joseph Berger and colleagues. This theory argues that power and prestige orderings in groups arise from members' expected contributions to trouble solutions. These expectations shape grouping interaction confirming the expectations and stabilizing the orderings. The theory further argues that in the absence of information directly linking members' abilities to tasks at hand, group members draw inferences almost those abilities from the stratification organisation of the larger social context, thus reproducing that system. On this foundation, work on expectation states theory has expanded, systematically refining and extending the theory and examining its implications. Of detail interest under contemporary circumstances is work showing that new information about group members' task-relevant abilities can negate the effects on group interaction of stereotypes drawn from the existing stratification order, potentially changing the stratification club of the larger social context. As well of interest is the way ideas underlying this theory parallel ideas fundamental to the interactionist perspective in SSP.

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