Exchange, Perceived Alternatives, and Reinforcement Schedule: Cohesiveness Among Unmarried Couples

Abstract

Abstract The extent to which partners of premarital dyads (N = 60 couples) believe they could just as easily have their needs met outside of the relationship was predicted and found to be associated with couple cohesiveness. As also predicted, this relationship was strongest when the exchange distribution between partners was imbalanced. Partner predictability was used as an indicator of the extent to which a couple tended to be on a continuous as opposed to an intermittent reinforcement schedule. I hypothesized that intermittent reinforcement (low predictability) is a better predictor of cohesiveness than continuous reinforcement (high predictability). The zero-order results showed a strong relationship in the direction opposite to that hypothesized. The longer the partners had been together, however, the weaker this relationship became, reaching near zero among the couples that had been together the longest.