The Tripartite Nature of Marital Commitment: Personal, Moral, and Structural Reasons to Stay Married

Abstract

This study assesses the empirical viabilihy of Johnson's (1991) commitment framework. The core principle is that commitment, rather than a unitary phenomenon, involves three distinct experiences: wanting to stay married, feeling morally obligated to stay married, and feeling constrained to stay married. Using data from a sample of married couples, we show that direct measures of the three experiences are not highly correlated with each other, that a measure of so-called global commitment is a function primarily, if not exclusively; of personal commitment, that the three direct measures of the experiences of commitment are associated for the most part with the components of each type as hypothesized in the commitment framework, and that the three types of commitment and their components are not associated in the same way with other variables. Key Words: commitment, marriage, stability. What does it mean to be committed to a relationship? Johnson (1973, 1982, 1991, in press) has argued that the experience of commitment is not unitary, that there are three distinct types of commitment, each with a different set of causes, a different phenomenology, and different cognitive, emotional, and behavioral consequences. Personal commitment refers to the sense of wanting to stay in the relationship, moral commitment to feeling morally obligated to stay, and structural commitment to feeling constrained to stay regardless of the level of personal or moral commitment. We report an investigation of the experiential nature of commitment in the context of first marriages that have survived from 1981 to 1994. Data are presented on the relationships among the three types of commitment and on the relationship of each of the three types to so-called global commitment. We also show that the three types of commitment are functions of different components of commitment and are related differently to a number of other antecedents and consequences. TYPES OF COMMITMENT Johnson's (1991) commitment framework is organized around a discussion of the components of three major types of commitment and identifies the key sets of factors that contribute to the experiences of personal, moral, or structural commitment to a particular relationship. The first two types of commitment, personal and moral, are experienced as internal to the individual and are a function of the person's own attitudes and values. The third type of commitment, structural, is experienced as external to the individual and is a function of perceptions of constraints that make it costly for the individual to leave the relationship. Personal Commitment Personal commitment. the extent to which one wants to stay in a relationship, is affected by three components (Johnson, 1991). First, individuals may want to continue a relationship because they are attracted to their partner. Second, personal commitment is a function of attraction to the relationship. Although under many conditions these two components of personal commitment are correlated with each other, they clearly are not the same phenomenon. One can feel a strong attraction to an individual who, in the context of the relationship, behaves in ways that one finds quite unsatisfactory. Furthermore, the attractiveness of a relationship may be experienced as a joint function of the actions of both partners or may be attributed primarily to oneself. For example, one way a physically abusive husband controls his wife is by convincing her that the abuse is more her fault than his (Johnson, 1995; Kirkwood, 1993; Pence & Paymar, 1993). In such a case, a woman may have quite negative feelings about the violent relationship but still experience strong feelings of love for her partner, who has convinced her that he is not the problem. The third component of personal commitment is couple identity. Social relationships are a central part of identity (Kuhn & McPartland, 1954; McCall & Simmons, 1978). …