Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do Close Relationships Form and Function?
Map whose actions affect whose outcomes and which alternatives exist.
Why you’re reading it. Separate relationship structure from a list of personal characteristics.
A question to consider. Two friends disagree about a shared commitment. How might unequal alternatives change the meaning of the same agreement?
Why this reading
A relationship cannot be explained by adding two personality descriptions. Interdependence theory asks how each person's outcomes depend on both people's actions and the alternatives available to them.
Before you read
Actor control concerns one's own actions; partner control concerns the other's; joint control concerns their combination. Transformation describes how broader motives alter responses to immediate outcomes. It need not mean conscious calculation.
Read for
- Compare dependence, shared interests, time, and uncertainty as properties of situations.
- Distinguish satisfaction from commitment, investments, and alternatives.
- Ask which examples illustrate the framework and which evidence tests a specific prediction.
Consider afterwards
- Two people remain in equally unsatisfying relationships. How could their alternatives and investments imply different explanations?
Editorial context
This theoretical review selects examples to demonstrate a framework, rather than systematically testing every proposition. Its account of constrained alternatives challenges explanations that blame persistence entirely on personal traits. Describing dependence does not imply that staying is desirable or that leaving is easily possible.