Investment Model

People are social and cultural animals that are programmed to form and maintain social bonds and relationships (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). If relationships are so important to people then why do so many relationships end? Marriages end at an alarming rate, couples break-up, friendships dissolve, going against what nature intended. With relationships being an important aspect of human nature it is important to understand why some people maintain relationships, while others decide to end them. One model which looks at understanding the maintenance of relationships is the Investment Model. The Investment Model helps explain relationship commitment, and can be used to understand many aspects of relationships (Drigotas & Barta, 2001). This paper will examine the Investment model first by discussing the theory involved in this model, using my personal relationship to help explain the model. Next the Investment Model will be used to explore infidelity, which often is detrimental to relationships (McAlister, Pachana, & Jackson 2005). Finally relationships which involve abuse will be considered, using the Investment Model to help explain the decision to stay or leave.

The Investment Model is a very broad commitment model that explains various important behaviours in relationships, such as breaking up, willingness to sacrifice, accommodation, and the derogation of alternatives (Drigotas & Barta, 2001). The Investment Model is an extension of the interdependence theory and focuses on commitment. It states that individuals should be satisfied with their relationship if they are provided with high rewards at a low cost (Rusbult, 1983). The Investment Model is comprised of three components, satisfaction level, quality of alternatives, and investment size. I will use my current romantic relationship to help explain the three components of the Investment Model.

The first component of the Investment Model is satisfaction level which is a “function of the comparison level and current relational outcomes” (Le & Agnew, 2003, p. 38). Therefore, if outcomes are higher than the comparison level, then relationship satisfaction occurs, and if the outcome is lower than the comparison level, dissatisfaction occurs. Satisfaction level is thus subjective to the individual (Le & Agnew, 2003). In my relationship, the satisfaction level is high because I have not had a previous long term relationship, and have had many friends who have had bad relationships, so I expected relationships to be not very rewarding. Therefore, the outcome is much higher than my comparison level.

Quality of alternatives refers to perceiving an alternative to the relationship as more appealing. This can refer to people such as someone else who may offer a better relationship, or family members and friends that are more enjoyable to spend time with. However, alternatives can also refer to the fact that having no relationship may be a more attractive alternative than the current relationship (Impett, Beals, & Peplau, 2001). Currently my life is very busy, the little free time I get I love to spend with my partner. I typically to not spend any extended amount of time with other males, therefore my alternatives are low as there is nothing in my life right now which seems like a better alternative to my current relationship.

The third component, investment size, also contributes to relationship stability, with investments referring to concrete or intangible aspects that are attached to the partnership and would be lost if the relationship ended (Le & Agnew, 2003). There are typically two categories of investments, intrinsic and extrinsic investments. Intrinsic investments include many factors that are put directly into the relationship, such as time, emotional effort, or self-disclosures. Extrinsic investment is when unrelated resources become connected to the relationship, such as mutual friends and shared possessions (Rusbult, 1983). The investment in my relationship is high as I have invested both intrinsic and extrinsic investments. The main intrinsic investments are the self-disclosers and emotional effort. I have told my partner things that no one else knows if our relationship was to end then this would be lost. Also extrinsic investments are high as we live together and share many things such as a car, and have put a lot of money into a non refundable holiday to Hawaii.

The Investment Model, in summary, postulates that individuals who are highly satisfied with the relationship, perceive few appealing alternatives, and have invested a great deal into the relationship, will have a highly committed relationship (Impett et al., 2001).

Recently, the Investment Model has been used in the research of infidelity and has helped to shed light on the issue (Drigotas & Barta, 2001). The Investment Model has been shown to be an effective predictor for many important relationship maintenance behaviours, and has also been seen as a useful tool for predicting dating infidelity (Drigotas, Safstrom, & Gentilia, 1999). Infidelity can have several negative consequences with marital infidelity being the leading cause of divorce, spousal battery and homicide (Drigotas & Barta, 2001).

The term infidelity has two aspects. Firstly it involves thinking that one’s partner is violating relationship norms with regard to the nature of the partner’s interactions with someone else. Secondly, it involves actually violating relationship norms with regard to one’s interactions with someone else. Infidelity can, therefore, be differentiated from extradyadic behaviour which just refers to the second aspect of the infidelity definition (Drigotas et al., 1999). However, for the purpose of this essay, the two terms will be used interchangeably to refer to the actual behaviour of violating relationship norms regarding inappropriate interactions with someone else.

Usually, participants in infidelity studies report two main justifications for participating in extradyadic behaviour. The first is low satisfaction in the relationship, and the second is high satisfaction with someone new. Both these reasons are covered and explained by the Investment Model, and are seen to impact on infidelity as they erode commitment (Drigotas et al., 1999). One study found that the strongest predictor of extradyadic behaviour was quality of alternatives (McAlister et al., 2005). Relationship satisfaction was also found to be a significant negative predictor of extradyadic behaviour. Surprisingly, this study found that investment size was not a predictor of extradyadic behaviour. However, the authors believe that this was because they added many different variables into their study which originally may have been considered to be included in the investment category (McAlister et al., 2005). Although all three factors were not supported, the results still support the Investment Model as both satisfaction, and alternatives, were found to be more important in predicting infidelity than other variables, such as personality factors, gender, age, and previous sexual experience.

The use of the Investment Model in the research of infidelity has many positive aspects. It has been successful in predicting infidelity before it occurs. In contrast traditional methods of research, rely on the participant accurately reporting their infidelity after it occurs (Drigotas & Barta, 2001). Secondly, research on infidelity using the Investment Model has helped to provide additional support for the breadth and importance of the Investment Model (Drigotas et al., 1999).

Intimate partner violence (IPV) can be devastating for the individuals involved. Originally it was assumed that men predominantly engaged in physical violence within a relationship, however recently IPV been seen to be bidirectional with both men and women participating in physical violence (Acher, 2000 as cited in Rhatigan, Moore, & Stuart, 2005). However a lot of the research to date has focused on relationships where women have been the victims of abuse and for the purpose of this essay the focus will be on battered women. The Investment Model is particularly useful and predicting and understanding the pattern of women’s decisions to remain or leave an abusive relationship (Choice & Lamke, 1997, as cited in Rhatigan & Axsom, 2006). Many other models which have been developed to understand why women remain in violent relationships focus on one specific reason such as learned helplessness, or traumatic bonding. However research has found that there are many factors which influence an individual’s decision to stay or leave, thus making the Investment Model more appropriate as it involves many factors (Rhatigan et al., 2005).

The Investment Model can help explain the commitment felt by battered women and assumes that commitment is the mediator in the decision to stay of leave (Rhatigan et al., 2005). By using the three components of the Investment Model as determinates of commitment has help to predict behaviour within an abusive relationship. For example it was found that battered women who had returned to an abusive relationship felt as though they had invested more into the relationship, and felt as though they had few alternatives (Katz, Kuffel, & Brown, 2006). Practically this understanding of how the Investment Model explains the decision to stay or leave an abusive relationship may be useful for those individuals involved in treating abused people, as they may be able to change how the three components of the model are viewed. By increasing possible alternatives and decreasing the perceived value of investments, abused people may determine to leave an abusive relationship.

The Investment Model is useful in understanding commitment to a relationship, and helps to explain many behaviours that are involved in relationships. The Investment Model proposes that satisfaction, alternatives, and investments influence relationship commitment, if an individual has high satisfaction and investments, and has few alternatives then a stable relationship will result. Infidelity can have many negative consequences on a relationship and the Investment Model has been used to successfully understand and predict infidelity. Abusive relationships and the decision of stay or leave the relationship have also been better understood through the Investment Model. In summary the Investment Model is important to help understand relationships as it is a broad model that can be applied to many aspects of a relationship.

Word count: 1495

References

Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. (2008). Social Psychology & Human Nature. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Drigotas, S. M., & Barta, W. (2001). The cheating heart: Scientific explorations of indidelity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 117-180.

Drigotas, S. M, Safstrom, A. C., & Gentilia, T. (1999). An investment model prediction of dating infidelity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(3), 509-534.

Impett, E. A., Beals, K. P., & Peplau, L.A. (2001). Testing the investment model of relationship commitment and stability in a longitudinal study of married couples. Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social, 20(4), 312-326.

Katz, J., Kuffel, S. W., & Brown, F. A. (2006). Leaving a sexually coercieve dating partner: A prospective application of the investment model. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30, 267-275.

Le, B., & Agnew, C. R. (2003). Commitment and its theorized determinants: A meta-analysis of the investment model. Personal Relationships, 10, 37-57.

McAlister, A. R., Pachana, N., & Jackson, C. J. (2005). Predictors of young dating adults’ inclination to engage in extradyadic sexual activities: A multi-perspective study. British Journal of Psychology, 96, 331-350.

Rhatigan, D. L, & Axsom, D. K. (2006). Using the investment model to understand battered women’s commitment to abusive relationships. Journal of Family Violence, 21(2), 153-162.

Rhatigan, D. L., Moore, T. M., & Stuart, G. L. (2005). An investment model analysis of relationship stability among women court-mandated to violence interventions. Psychology of Women Quarterl, 29, 313-322.

Rusbult, C. E. (1983). A longitudinal test of the investment model: The development

(and deterioration) of satisfaction and commitment in heterosexual involvements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(1), 101-117.

Appendix A

Self Assessment

I really enjoyed working on this assignment for many reasons. I found my Blog topic really interesting and working on it was not a dreaded task like some other assignments, but also I think that using the Blog forum is a very interesting way to enhance learning and has challenged not only my computer skills but forced me to look critically and analysis things that I have never thought of before.

Theory

The theory aspect of my Blog was interesting because I got to research a topic which I was interested in and understand a bit more about it. I think that I showed my understanding of the theory by using examples from my personal relationship. I also think that in my introduction to by Blog I explain who the theory links social psychology in general

Research

I found that research was really important in this Blog because I didn’t really have a question as such I just has to discuss the investment model. So I had to research a variety of different articles and read them all so that I could decide what I wanted to set my question as.

Written Expression

Using Microsoft Word the readability of my Blog was tested and it was found my Blog was a grade level of 12 using the Flesch-Kinciad scale. A grade level of 12 is appropriate as it is the level which psychology articles are today. I tried to make my Blog as easy as possible to read because I wanted people to understand to context rather then being caught up on big words, I also wanted to make my Blog easy to read so that it was enjoyable and hopefully people would read all of it and learn a little about my topic. I kept each paragraph short to help in the readability as well as trying to explain thing straight forward and kept the sentences as short as possible. I used APA format were appropriate but recognised that because it was going to be published as a Blog some of the formatting will change so was primarily just trying to ensure that it was easy to read as a Blog posting.

Online Engagement

I am very proud of my online engagement because at first I hated the idea of using a Blog page as part of our assessment. However I really stated to enjoy it and read almost everybody’s postings throughout the semester. I also found that by doing this I became more interested in the subject and think that my personal understanding of topics has improved. I received two stars for my blog page, however I was expecting to gain 3 stars. This term it was a bit harder to participate compared to the first term because everyone had individual topics, however I think I still made very good comments on other peoples blogs which hopefully helped them with their topic. Please see my blog page to see my original posts, also view the right hand side of my page to find a lits and links to comments I've made on other peoples page.

Ignorance is Bliss

I have really enjoyed reading our text book, there have been so many things that I’ve noticed in the world or have always wondered about which were covered in the text book.. Also there have been several things that I have never thought about and have shocked me, and have slightly changed my way of thinking about the world.

One of these things that once I read I couldn’t stop thinking about was in chapter 3: the self, and was the finding that depressed people don’t distort things very much at all, rather it is non depressed people who seem to distort the world. Depressed people were found to have a more accurate view of the world in many aspects such as, judging who liked them, accepting blame for the things that they had done wrong, and judging how much control they had of their lives. I found this interesting because people often seek out the truth about themselves and people around them, valuing knowledge and wisdom and usually the term ‘ignorance is bliss’ is used in a some what condescending manner to talk about people who are not as wise or smart as yourself. However it seems that humans are naturally wired to be ignorant about many aspects of themselves and the world around them. The human body constantly amazes me at how smart it is at protecting itself.

I wonder what this finding means in terms of the treatment for depression. Can people be successfully treated for depression and forget about the reality of the world as they saw i? Can they be helped to form illusions of the world, or will they always know what the world was really like?

I am often accused by my family and my boyfriend of being to naïve about the world because I assume that all people are good and nice, however I am starting to think that this is not my fault and that nature intended me to have this illusion about the world so that I can be happy. If given the choice to see the world exactly how it is and be depressed or to have a slight illusion of the world but be happy, I know I would rather pick the second. But I wonder if anyone would rather see things for what they are? So please let me know your thought and feelings about this topic.

Thanks

Love – where does it fit?

The theory behind the investment model is that we stay in relationships because of a mix of a) satisfaction b) alternatives and c) investment.

But where does love fit. Arguably it could fit in the investment category: we have a capacity and need to love and we invest this in our relationships with others. But perhaps love is more than an investment. Perhaps love is an ideal, that exists in our imagination. Perhaps love is something unique for each individual, and independent from our relationships. It exists in theory only, and although we might love someone and be in a relationship with them this practical application of love falls short of our unique ideal of love, the one that exists in our minds.

Is there is a difference between practical love (ie investment) and idealised love (ie what exists in our minds). Perhaps the investment model does not reflect the resilience of our internalised, fantastical, ideal view of love. If we have this ideal in mind it might affect our vision, like those rose tinted glasses, and fool our rational mind into believing the relationship really is worth maintaining despite any lack of satisfaction, wealth of alternatives and investment.

Does our culture force us to have an unrealistic view of love? From a young age we (especially girls) are told fairy tales with happy endings where prince charming always recuses the princess, or were true love can destroy an evil curse. Then it doesn’t change much as we get older. As teens we read magazines that have quizzes on “how to find the perfect man” or “is it love or lust” etc etc. In a lot of movies there are also unrealistic portrayals of love that tend to end with a kiss and then the credits appear. But what happens after the credits? How does love fit into the relationship? In terms of the investment model it seems that you do not need love to have and maintain a good relationship. But is that what we want, or has our culture turned us into love craving monsters who are searching for our one true love or soul mate?......

Australia Says No

We have all seen the ads on TV for the "violence against women Australia Says No" campaign. Many of the people in these campaigns talk about relationships and violence in these relationships. You might be wondering what this campaign has to do with my topic about 'use the investment model to explain love and relationships' , but I've started doing some research and have found out that the investment model is often used to help explain why people stay in abusive relationships.

Our text book explains the investment model as a theory that uses 3 factors - satisfaction, alternatives, and investments - to explain why people stay with their long term relationship partners. The first factor satisfaction refers to if you are satisfied with your relationship, therefore it you are more satisfied then you are more likely to stay in the relationship. The second factor is available alternatives, if you don't really like your relationship but you don't see any better alternative partners then you are more likely to stay in the relationship. The final factor refers to how much an individual has invested in the relationship, if you have put a lot of your emotions, money, and time into the relationship you may be less likely to leave because you would have lost all you have invested into the relationship and would have to start from scratch in the next relationship.

So I thought that I would get you guys to think and come up with ideas of why this model might help explain why people might stay in abusive relationships (it might help you remember the investment model for our test) and then later on I will let you know what the research says and see how right you all were.
Thanks :)