Discuss Theories of the Maintenance of Relationships (8 and 16 marks)

One Theory into the maintenance of relationships is Walster et al’s Equity theory. This says that people want equity in a relationship and inequity has a big potential to cause dissatisfaction. People who either give a lot and receive a little or give a little and receive a lot in a relationship would see inequity and therefore become dissatisfied.

A supporting study was conducted into the Equity Theory by Stafford and Canary (2006) who asked over 200 couples to complete measures of equity and marital satisfaction. It was found that satisfaction was highest in those who saw their relationships to be equitable and lowest in those who saw it as inequitable. This would support Equity as a theory for the maintenance of relationships as it shows that if people feel equal in the relationship they are more likely to happy in the relationship and therefore want to maintain it.

DeMaris (2007) also carried out a study which supported the equity theory as a theory for the maintenance of relationships by having 1500 couples take the ‘US National Survey of Families and Households’ and found that inequity was a high cause of marital dispute and raised the risk of divorce, especially when the women felt under benefited. This supports the equity theory as it shows that people who do not feel their relationship is equitable are more likely to have marital disputes and think of divorce which goes against maintaining the relationship meaning that if they had equity their relationships would be maintained better.

The Equity theory however could suffer from Gender bias as it has been suggested by research that women and men see equity in a relationship differently and that women often seek less for themselves in a relationship. This therefore reduces the Validity of the theory.

Another Theory of the maintenance of relationships is the Investment Theory. This theory looks more at how much commitment to a relationship is down to investment rather than satisfaction and says that if we have a greater investment in a relationship we are more likely to have a bigger commitment to it. These investments can be financial, temporal or emotional.

Dindia and Baxtor (1987) conducted a study which supported the investment theory by looking into how 50 couples maintained their relationships and found that the longer a couple was together the higher satisfaction was with less maintenance strategies being used. This suggests that temporal investment is linked to the commitment to the relationship which would support the investment theory as a theory of the maintenance of relationship as, as the investment got bigger so did the commitment to maintaining the relationship.    

The investment theory can also be used to explain the maintenance of abusive relationships and why individuals stay in an abusive relationship. Rusbult and Martz (1995) conducted a study to look into this by interviewing women form a shelter for women coming out of abusive relationships.  They found that when abused women felt their investment in a relationship was significant, they were less likely to leave their partners. This would support the investment theory as a theory of the maintenance of relationships as it shows that people are more likely to stay in a relationship and are therefore more committed to it, even an abusive one, the bigger their investment is.

However this study was carried out using interviews which is a self-report method meaning that participants could have given answers which they thought to be socially desirable rather than truthful answers, this needs to be taken into account when drawing conclusions are drawn from the results of this study as they could be inaccurate.

The Investment theory can be said to be culturally bias and cannot be generalised across the world as in some cultures it is things such as religious pressure or breakups being socially unaccepted that cause the maintenance of a relationships rather than how much investment or commitment a person has to it.