Entitlement and the Affectional Bond: Justice in Close Relationships

364 Pages·1994·36.97 MB·English

by  Gerold Mikula

ENTITLEMENT AND THE
AFFECTIONAL BOND
Justice in Close Relationships
CRITICAL ISSUES IN SOCIAL JUSTICE
Published in association with the International Center for Social Justice
Research, Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis,
Missouri.
Series Editors: MELVIN J. LERNER and RIEL VERMUNT
Washington University University of Leiden
St. Louis, Missouri uiden, The Netherlands
Recent volumes in this series:
ENTITLEMENT AND THE AFFECTIONAL BOND
Justice in Close Relationships
Edited by Melvin J. Lerner and Gerold Mikula
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Edited by Riel Vermunt and Herman Steensma
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A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of
each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment.
For further information please contact the publisher.
ENTITLEMENT AND THE
AFFECTIONAL BOND
Justice in Close Relationships
Edited by
J.
Melvin Lerner
Washington University
St. Louis, Missouri
and
Gerold Mikula
University of Cruz
Cruz, Austria
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Entitlement and the affectional bond: justice in close relationships / edited by Melvin J.
Lerner and Gerold Mikula.
p. cm.—(Critical issues in social justice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4899-0986-2
1. Interpersonal relations. 2. Entitlement attitudes. 3. Social justice. 4. Intimacy (Psychol
ogy). I. Lerner, Melvin J., 1929- II. Mikula, Gerold. III. Series.
HM132.E59 1994 94-34391
303.372—dc20 CEP
ISBN 978-1-4899-0986-2 ISBN 978-1-4899-0984-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-0984-8
© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise,
without written permission from the Publisher
Contributors
Mark Attridge, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Min
neapolis, Minnesota 55455-0344
Ellen Berscheid, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455-0344
Bram P. Buunk, Social and Organizational Psychology, University of
Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, NL-9712 TS Groningen, The Nether
lands
Ann E. Cameron, Social-Personality Psychology, Graduate Center, City
University of New York, New York, New York 10036-8099
Kathleen Chrisman, School of Dental Medicine, University of Pittsburgh,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261
Margaret S. Clark, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon Univer
sity, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Faye Crosby, Department of Psychology, Smith College, Northhampton,
Massachusetts 01063
Serge Desmarais, Department of Psychology, St. Mary's University, Ha
lifax, Nova Scotia B3H 3C3, Canada
Nicholas P. Emler, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of
Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UD, England
Rehana Farrell, 233 Marscott Road, Kingston, New York 12401
v
vi Contributors
Sharon Hall, Department of Psychiatry, United Medical School of Guy's
and st. Thomas, London, United Kingdom
John G. Holmes, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada
Louise H. Kidder, Department of Psychology, Temple University, Phil
adelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
Nobuko Kosuge, Temple University Japan, Minawi Osawa, Tokyo 161,
Japan
Melvin J. Lerner, Department of Psychology, Washington University, St.
Louis, Missouri 63130-4899
George Levinger, Department of Psychology, University of Massachu
setts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003
Gerold Mikula, Department of Psychology, University of Graz, A-80lO
Graz, Austria
Leo Montada, Department of Psychology, Trier University, D-54286 Trier,
Germany
Barbara Reichle, Department of Psychology, Trier University, D-54286
Trier, Germany
Pepper Schwartz, Department of Sociology, University of Washington,
Seattle, Washington 98195
Susan Sprecher, Department of Sociology, Illinois State University, Nor
mal, Illinois 61790-4660
Janice M. Steil, Derner Institute, Adelphi University, Garden City, Long
Island, New York 11530
Nico W. VanYperen, Department of Social Psychology, University of
Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1 NL-9712 TS Groningen, The Nether
lands
Preface
If the truth were told, this volume and its direct antecedents must rank
among the most ambitious, if not simply pretentious, endeavors imag
inable, at least in the social sciences. The titles of the volume and the
chapters, promising to integrate the experiences of the sense of justice and
the affectional bonding of people in close relations, seem straightforward
and reasonable enough. What they fail to convey, however, is the simple
bald fact that we in the human social sciences have no firm grasp on either
of these two fundamental experiences-what we sometimes call "love"
and "justice." To begin with, even as "scientists" committed to under
standing based upon systematic propositions linking publicly observable
concepts, we have no clear consensus concerning the nature of the affec
tional bonds linking people in close relationships-love, intimacy, caring,
mutual responsiveness, or the sense of justice, fairness, deserving, and
entitlement. And we are continually handicapped in our efforts to under
stand these complex, moving experiences by the persistent tendency to
reduce them to manifestations of, "nothing but," familiar psychological or
even biological processes-"secondary rewards," "selfish genes."
So, why then this volume? Although there are many answers to the
question, probably the most germane is that the basic issues are so im
portant and intriguing that the recent past has seen rather dramatic paral
lel growth in social scientists' interest in these two areas-justice and
close relationships. Even though different theories and conceptual sys
tems continue to produce ambuiguity and often conflict, rather than
dampening interest they appear to have the effect of generating further
research. And possibly more to the point, two previous collections of
papers devoted to the appearance of justice in close relationships (Melvin
J. Lerner and Sally C. Lerner, eds., The Justice Motive in Social Behavior
[New York: Plenum Press, 1981] and Janice M. Steil, ed., Social Justice
Research, 1989, Vol. 3, No.2) were remarkably successful in identifying
important themes for future considerations, some of which are repre-
vii
viii Preface
sented in this volume. Strangely enough, it appears that without con
sensus concerning either concepts or theory, over the past decade we have
come to know more, and become even more intrigued, by the funda
mental issues associated with the sense of entitlement and the affectional
bond in close relationships. Basically, this volume was intended to docu
ment how far we have come and to suggest directions for the next gen
eration of research.
The following individuals and institutions deserve our sincerest ac
knowledgment and gratitude for their contribution to this volume. We
would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada for providing their continued support (to Melvin J. Lerner) over
the past several years. We also wish to express our appreciation to the
authors who accepted the invitation to contribute to this volume. Ulti
mately, it is their writing and research that have created it.
M.J.L.
G.M.
Contents
Chapter 1 Justice in Close Relationships: An Introduction. . . . . 1
Gerold Mikula and Melvin J. Lerner
Rules of Justice in Close Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Concerns with Justice in Close Relationships ............. 3
Gender Inequalities in Close Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Interpretations of Violations of Entitlements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Mutual Stimulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Chapter 2 Equity and Balance in the Exchange of Contributions
in Close Relationships.......................... . 11
Susan Sprecher and Pepper Schwartz
Equity and Equality in Contributions to the Relationship. . . 12
Money and Work.................................. 13
Household Chores. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Intimacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
A Traditional Exchange of Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Theoretical Background to Perceived Equity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Equity Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Equality: Another Distributive Justice Norm. . . . . . . . . . . 17
Social-Exchange Variables in Outcome-
Interdependence Theory. ...... ... ............. ... 18
Measurement and Analysis of Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Global Measures of Equity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Detailed Measures of Equity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
ix