No doubt you have heard people refer to the dating scene as a meat market. This rather blunt expression is a nod to the ways in which romantic relationships are like commodities to be negotiated and bartered on the open market. We bring certain strengths to the table, try to tuck our baggage under our chair, and look to make a good deal with a partner. With the advent of online and searchable dating sites such as Match.com and eHarmony, this shopping metaphor has taken on an even more literal dimension. When we take this market-driven approach to studying how people form relationships, we are applying social exchange theory.

The social exchange model (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) takes an economic perspective and assumes that people approach relationships with the underlying motivation of self-interest. Just as two businesses enter into a corporate merger only if the CEOs of both expect a higher return from combining forces than from staying in competition, relationships have value when both people perceive that they have more to gain than to lose from being in a partnership. The benefits of a relationship can be financial, emotional, sexual, and social. But entering into any relationship also carries certain costs that need to be negotiated along the way.

Clearly, this is not the most romantic view of love. But a social exchange approach to relationships does make intuitive sense. Every relationship has its ups and downs, but so long as the ups outnumber the downs, the outcome of the relationship is generally positive. Several studies have confirmed that people are more satisfied in a relationship to the extent that they see the benefits as outweighing the costs (Duffy & Rusbult, 1986; Rusbult, 1980, 1983; Rusbult et al., 1986; Rusbult & Martz, 1995).

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But not everyone is equally happy with the same relationship outcome. If you were brought up in a harmonious, two-parent home, watched a steady diet of Disney movies, or paid a lot of attention to online matchmaking sites advertising the importance of finding your soul mate (Finkel et al., 2012), you might have internalized ideals of happily ever after and one true love. These cultural standards can set a high comparison level, your expectation of how rewarding a relationship should be. A relationship that merely delivers more benefits than costs might not quite live up to the ideal of finding your soul mate. On the other extreme, if you were raised in a home full of marital strife and domestic violence, your comparison level for a satisfying relationship would likely be much lower and thus more easily met or exceeded. A relationship with a given set of rewards and costs would seem much more satisfying to the person with the very low comparison level than to the person with the very high one (Rusbult, 1983). In fact, those who believe in the idea of a soul mate are satisfied in their relationship only to the extent that they see the partner as an ideal mate (Franiuk et al., 2002, 2004; Knee, 1998). Using the logic of the social exchange model, we can describe people’s satisfaction with their current relationship in a formal equation:

SATISFACTION = (REWARDS – COSTS) – COMPARISON LEVEL

From the perspective of the social exchange model, we should always be looking to maximize benefits for ourselves—assuming that more is always better. For something as deeply emotional and prosocial as our close, intimate relationships, is it fair to say that these self-interested concerns are the only driving force in how we form and maintain strong bonds with each other? Critics of the social exchange model have said, “No!” They point out that the social exchange model does not explain the sense of fairness that is so important in our relationships (Clark & Mills, 1979; Fiske, 1991). We generally don’t keep a ledger of who contributes what to the relationship, and we generally don’t try to maximize our own outcomes at the expense of our partner—at least not if we want the relationship to last!

Equity theory addresses these critiques of the social exchange model. According to equity theory, people are motivated to maintain a sense of fairness or equity, where both partners feel that the proportion of rewards or outcomes (benefits) to inputs (costs) that each receives is roughly equal (Adams, 1963; Hatfield et al., 1978). The equity formula looks like this, with “O” standing for outcomes and “I” standing for inputs:

O/I FOR SELF = O/I FOR PARTNER

When we feel that our partner is getting a higher proportion of outcomes relative to inputs than we are, we feel angry and resentful. But the partner who feels unfairly advantaged in a relationship also can feel a sense of guilt that can motivate effort to balance the scales (Sprecher, 1986, 1992). How is equity restored? You can either increase the inputs or decrease the outcomes for yourself or your partner. Alternatively, you can decrease the inputs or increase the outcomes of the person who is disadvantaged. You can also make these adjustments to objective contributions (e.g., the amount of work done) and payouts (e.g., benefits received) or to your subjective perception of these factors.

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To see how equity works, let’s consider an example from a popular television show. In the sitcom Modern Family, the clean freak Mitchell works full time as an attorney. He resists the urge to clean up the house in order to send a message to his stay-at-home, less tidy husband, Cameron, that perhaps he should help with the housework (Wrubel et al., 2011). In this example, the overburdened Mitchell has reduced his cleaning inputs to try to restore a sense of equity. At the same time, he hopes that this reduction in input—his no longer cleaning up the mess—will prompt Cameron to increase his input. These two strategies are adjustments to inputs, but adjustments also can be made to outcomes. The overworked partner might withhold other, you know, “benefits” of the relationship. Or the person doing less housework might surprise his or her partner with a weekend trip to a spa.

These little adjustments in relationships happen all the time as partners try to maintain a sense of equity. Even when equity isn’t achieved objectively, just feeling as if things are equitable can make a difference. In the Modern Family example, we imagine that Cameron might not permanently change his sloppier habits, but maybe he’ll make up for his low inputs in cleaning by being especially appreciative of the hard work that Mitchell puts into the house. Gratitude actually can go a long way toward making the scales seem more balanced.

The motivation for fairness in our relationships helps to explain assortative mating, people’s tendency to seek relationships with others who are similar to them in some kind of social hierarchy. Of course, we’ve already noted that similarity is a key component of attraction and liking. But pairing up with those who are similar to you in social value also helps to equate partners on what rewards or resources they bring to the relationship (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993). For example, on the web site hotornot.com, people can post pictures of themselves to be rated by others on attractiveness, but they can also use this web site to contact other people to strike up conversations. Although there is strong agreement in who is rated as most attractive—and we know how much people value physical attractiveness in potential relationship partners—people still generally contact others who are similar to them in attractiveness (Lee et al., 2008), those in their own league, so to speak. Not-so-hot people try to connect with other not-so-hot people. This is known as the matching phenomenon. It helps to ensure a certain balance of outcomes in the relationship. People generally seek and end up in romantic relationships with someone similar to them in physical attractiveness (Feingold, 1988). Granted, the exchange of relationship rewards can cross currencies: One person (more often a woman) might trade on her youth and good looks to attract a mate who can provide financial resources and security (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004). For example, Hugh Hefner, the famed and wealthy impresario of all things Playboy, has had a string of beautiful girlfriends decades younger than himself.

The preference for equity in close relationships appears to be a cross-cultural universal, although the degree to which equity is achieved might vary a great deal (Aumer-Ryan et al., 2007). When people feel that the proportion of costs to benefits is roughly equivalent for both themselves and their partners, they are more likely to have sex, fall in love, commit to a long-term relationship, and be satisfied in that relationship (Buunk & van Yperen, 1989; Sprecher, 1998; van Yperen & Buunk, 1990).

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