Lately in class we’ve been discussing social exchange theory, specifically, as it applies to the one-exchange game. As it turns out, some of its premises are largely applicable to the exchange dynamics of intimate relationships – interactions that take place in the marketplace for sex and love if you will. People look to maximize profit (or personal gain) in romantic exchanges (consistent with the ideas of rationality and self-interest raised in class), and stable outcomes in terms of who dates whom are largely contingent on each person’s options within the network (that is, the potential romantic transactions that can be made with neighboring nodes).

A paper by Rijt and Macy (2006) raises the idea that the lower your dependence on a relationship, the greater your bargaining power within that relationship. Perhaps, if you’re a person with many desirable qualities (sexual attractiveness, wealth etc) and many potential romantic partners you are likely to gain relatively more from a romantic exchange than someone who is highly dependent on the romantic attentions of only a few people. In class, we described social exchange as a bargaining procedure in which one’s power is determined by one’s relative dependence on others in the network. Rijt and Macy contend that intimacy is also inherently economic; sex and love are forms of social exchange. What makes someone dependent on someone else for sex/love/romance? According to Rijt and Macy, the exchange occurring in the existing relationship must be strictly better than the most attractive alternative. This seems to be related to the concept of stable outcomes. That is, if the sum of the two individuals’ best outside options exceeds the total surplus that can be achieved from trading with each other then there will be no deal (or no romantic/sexual interaction as the case is here). Taking this one step further, the paper proposes an essential ingredient for relationship longevity: greater payoff in the current relationship than one could plausibly expect from potential alternative partners. Long-lasting relationships are similar to “stable” social exchange.

In a similar paper, Baumeister and Voh (2004) raise the idea of the “principle of least interest”. A person is relatively more powerful on account of desiring an exchange less than the other person. For example, in a relationship, the person who is relatively less in love is more powerful. Might the person who is relatively more in love (and consequently less powerful) be more willing to settle for an egregiously unequal split – much like those who occupy the weakest positions in the one-exchange game? Being very much in love presumably means that a person is far less amenable to his outside options, or perhaps, does not perceive that he has them…

Baumeister and Voh also take up the argument that sex (in heterosexual relationship) is like a resource possessed by females and “purchased” by men through such “payment” as companionship, promises of marriage, fancy dinners etc. If we believe this model (and there is some evidence to suggest that men want sex more than women) then sexual exchanges are not unlike the bipartide market interpretation of social exchange. Here, women are the sellers and men are the buyers… Lastly, Baumeister and Voh’s paper raised and explored some interesting questions. Might advances in birth control that have come about in the last 50 or so years have decreased the cost of sexual exchange for women, increasing their payoff for a given exchange, but weakening their bargaining power? The paper explores this possibility. Might men need to bring less to the negotiations as a result? Along similar lines, has the market value of female sexuality declined due to social and cultural changes such as increased economic opportunities for women and increased sexual permissiveness? It’s interesting to think about how “power” might be influenced by more than just network position.

Rijt and Macy (2006), “Power and Dependence in Intimate Exchange” - http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/social_forces/v084/84.3van_de_rijt.html (If you have access)

Baumeister and Voh (2004), “Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions” -

http://search.bwh.harvard.edu/concourse/900/articles/BaumeisterSexEcon.pdf