A voluntary action performed in the expectation of getting a reward in return

4.2 Controlling, Between Individuals

Various social exchange theories concern outcome-oriented standards for enacting and judging relationships. Homans's distributive justice applied elementary principles of operant (Skinnerian) behaviorism to social interdependence, holding that individuals expect rewards proportionate to costs. From this came equity theory (Adams, Walster (later Hatfield), Walster, and Berscheid) that argued that people seek fair ratios of outcome to investment. Although couched in reward–cost terms, inequity theoretically relates to dissonance (Sect. 3.1), creating a drive to reduce it. The exchange idea 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–benefit analysis. Whether close relationships switch (Sect. 2.2) or not (Sect. 4.2) to a nonexchange (i.e., communal) orientation, people in relationships do control their own and the other's outcomes, addressed by theories of intent attribution (Sect. 3.1), emotion in relationships (Berscheid), and accommodation to disruption (Rusbult). Even outside close relationships, outcome dependence motivates individuation (Fiske), undercutting stereotypes. Control over one's outcomes appears in a cost–reward model (Dovidio, Piliavin) of helping.

Although motives to control one's outcomes theoretically underlie most positive relationships, they theoretically also underlie aggression. Excessive control over another person, to obtain desired outcomes, motivates instrumental aggression (Geen), following the frustration–aggression hypothesis (Dollard, Miller, Doob, Mowrer, and Sears). Other formulations carry an explicitly cognitive neoassociationist analysis (Berkowitz) of aggressive patterns. Lack of control, 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 communication (Hovland, Janis, and Kelley), as well as more recent principles of compliance involving scarcity (Cialdini) as a threat to control over outcomes.

5.4 Social Exchange and the Psychological Contract

The two exchange-based approaches of the psychological contract and social exchange theory have also been used to explain different attitudes and behaviors across work statuses. It has been argued that there are a number of factors that affect the exchange of contributions for inducements across part-time and full-time employees. For example, part-time employees receive fewer inducements such as benefits, task variety, and opportunities for advancement; part-time employees have lower expectations about what they should get from the organization; and part-time employees are more likely to be subject to “Theory X”-type management. These factors will have the effect of creating a perception of perceived inequity or psychological contract violation across work statuses, and they are more likely to lead to part-time employees developing economic relationships, rather than social exchange relationships, with employers. This, in turn, will affect outcome attitude and behaviors such as job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior.

Although some of the assumptions behind the social exchange-type approaches are questionable (e.g., that organizations treat part-time employees less favorably, that part-time employees expect less from their work), these approaches have been empirically tested and found to at least partially explain attitude and behavior differences across part-time and full-time employees.

Step 3: exchange

As was already discussed, voluntary exchange is a mainstay of social marketing. According to the exchange theory, social marketing has to offer users benefits in exchange for their behavioral change. Giorgi et al. (2016) point out that they agree to change their behavior toward more sustainable energy use in exchange for lower cost, convenience, and lifestyle choice. Respectively, marketers have to consider the alternatives as to what will motivate users to change their behavior and what should be offered as a value in exchange. The only concern is that the meaning of value is different for different segments. The exchange in energy consumption can be motivated by self-interest, social norms, or concern for the common good. While environmentalists “can leave comfort and cleanliness behind in the pursuit of a contemporary natural purity” (RCZM, 2019), the disinterested change their behavior solely because of cost 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 change, i.e., adjust the temperature, use more efficient vehicles, avoid unnecessary flights, manage energy better, recycle more, 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 cost saving has to be the key entry point to stimulate their behavioral change. Despite different attitudes and preferences (Ramos et al., 2015), research results show that all segments are more willing to participate in exchange when its value is clear.

A Basic Concepts and Assumptions

Social exchange occurs between two or more actors who are dependent on one another for valued outcomes. Social exchange theories assume that actors are motivated to obtain more of the outcomes that they value and others control, that actors provide each other with these valued benefits through some form of social exchange, and that exchanges between 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.g., organizations), and the resources can include not only tangible goods and services but also capacities to provide socially valued outcomes such as approval or status. In exchange experiments, the actors are always individual persons, but sometimes they are given roles as representatives of organizations. Exchange theories make 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 can use any resource of known value. Some exchange theories assume “rational” actors who cognitively weigh the potential benefits and costs of alternative partners and actions and make 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 9.1 illustrates, social exchange can take several distinct forms: direct exchange; generalized exchange; and productive exchange. In relations of direct exchange between two actors, each actor’s outcomes depend directly on another actor’s behaviors; that is, A provides value to B, and B to A, as in the example of two co-workers helping each other with various projects. As Figure 9.1a shows, such direct exchange relations can occur either in isolated dyads or within larger networks. In relations of generalized exchange among three or more actors, each actor gives benefits to another and eventually receives benefits from another, but not from the same actor. Consequently, the reciprocal dependence is indirect; a benefit received by B from A is not reciprocated directly by B’s giving to A but, rather, indirectly by B’s giving to another actor in the network. Some forms of indirect exchange (e.g., the classic Kula ring) take a specific circular form, as shown in Figure 9.1b. Other examples, such as donating blood and reviewing journal manuscripts, do not. Finally, in productive exchange (Figure 9.1c), both actors in the relation must contribute in order for either to obtain benefits (e.g., co-authoring a book).

Although generalized exchange was a particular interest of early anthropological exchange theorists, the study of direct exchange relations has dominated research and theorizing in sociology 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 (usually binding) through a series of offers and counteroffers. Each agreement comprises a discrete transaction that provides benefits for both actors. In reciprocal exchange, actors perform individual acts that benefit another, such as giving assistance 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.

9.16.3.3 Power and Division of Labor

How should power be allocated in a couple? The great majority of lesbian and gay couples feel that an equal balance of power would be desirable (Peplau & Cochran, 1990), but not all report that they achieve this ideal state. In Peplau and Cochran's study, 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 relationship was exactly equal. Others have found that majorities of gay as well as lesbian couples report equal power (see Peplau et al., 1996).

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

Other predictions from exchange theory have also received support from empirical research (Kurdek, 1995; Peplau, 1991; Peplau et al., 1996). In social exchange theory, the principle of least interest states that when one person is more dependent or involved than the other, the more dependent partner is expected to have 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 involvement and unequal power among lesbian couples. Overall, as predicted by social exchange theory, the woman who was less involved in the relationship had more power.

Although many people who are unfamiliar with lesbian and gay couples assume that, in same-sex couples, one partner plays a male and one a female role, research has consistently found that this is only rarely the case (Kurdek, 1995; Peplau et al., 1996). For example, Bell 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 not the case in their households. Kurdek (1993) reported egalitarian divisions of labor among lesbian and gay couples, and Patterson (1995d) reported that in a sample of lesbian couples with children, most family and household tasks were shared equally.

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; conflict resolution; social exchange; inequality; bargaining; power, status, 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 by social structures deriving from them. According to Karen Cook, a social interdependence theme integrates these, as do ideas about how group processes 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. Also, group process students have a common lineage and hold similar beliefs about how to do research and build theory.

That lineage includes Georg Simmel on implications of social forms for interaction; George Homans' exchange theory built upon principles of economics and operant conditioning psychology; Robert F. Bale's research on groups resolving tasks; ‘small groups’ research; theoretical as well as experimental economics work on bargaining and reward allocation; and game-theoretic inspired research in political science and psychology. Richard Emerson is especially important 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 research, an ideal carried out more in practice by group process researchers than by other SSP researchers. Group process researchers have provided models of such research, building small 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 limited to two topics, social exchange and status structures, epitomizing theoretical themes of the group processes perspective and its programmatic research emphasis. Contemporary social exchange theory starts with actors' interdependency: people need 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. Exchange networks—chains of exchange relations—are basic to sociological exchange theory and SSP because they bridge to larger social structures. From here, network theory and research proliferate, extending to corporate actors, the role 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.

Current work on status structures builds on expectation states theory, developed by Joseph Berger and colleagues. This theory argues that power and prestige orderings in groups arise from members' expected contributions to problem solutions. These expectations shape group 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 about those abilities from the stratification system 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 particular 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 order of the larger social context. Also of interest is the way ideas underlying this theory parallel ideas fundamental to the interactionist perspective in SSP.

What is the name for rewards and penalties that are given to people for their behavior in regard to social norms?

What are used for self evaluation and the formation of attitudes values beliefs and norms?

What term identifies interactions that are intimate personal caring and fulfilling?

When individuals are forced to behave in a certain way?