Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Close relationship partners are communally motivated to engage in prosocial behaviors that can promote each other’s well-being. It remains largely unexplored how both members’ communal motivations jointly shape the daily enactment of prosocial behaviors. This dyadic experience-sampling study aimed to partially fill this gap by studying whether both members’ communal motivations predict (a) the base rate of the actor’s prosocial behaviors, (b) the actor’s reciprocity to the partner’s earlier prosocial behaviors, and (c) the consistency of the actor’s enactment of prosocial behaviors, within a day. Actor–partner interdependence analyses showed that the base rate of prosocial behaviors was positively associated with both members’ communal motivations. Consistency was only associated with the actor’s communal motivation, while reciprocity was not related to either member’s communal motivation. We also explored participants’ rationale for the enacted behaviors. Implications regarding the roles of communal motivation in daily relational functions were discussed.

Keywords

communal motivation prosocial behaviors actor–partner interdependence model romantic relationships

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Agnew

C. R.

VanLange

P. A. M.

Rusbult

C. E.

Langston

C. A.

(1998). Cognitive interdependence: Commitment and the mental representation of close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 939–954.

Algoe

S. B.

(2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6, 455–469.

Aly

S. S.

Zhao

Jiang

(2014). Reliability of environmental sampling culture results using the negative binomial intraclass correlation coefficient. SpringerPlus, 3, 40.

Arriaga

X. B.

Agnew

C. R.

(2001). Being committed: Affective, cognitive, and conative components of relationship commitment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1190–1203.

Bates

Mächler

Bolker

B. M.

Walker

S. C.

(2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48.

Bauer

D. J.

(2005). Advanced topics in fitting mixed models for hierarchical data structures [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/spida/mixed1/

Bolger

Laurenceau

(2013). Intensive longitudinal methods: An introduction to diary and experience sampling research. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Clark

M. S.

Aragón

O. R.

(2013). Communal (and other) relationships: History, theory development, recent findings, and future directions. In Simpson

J. A.

Campbell

(Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Close Relationships (pp. 255–280). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Clark

M. S.

Fitness

Brissette

(2001). Understanding people’s perceptions of relationships is crucial to understanding their emotional lives. In Fletcher

G. J. O.

Clark

M. S.

(Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Interpersonal Processes (pp. 262–278). London, England: Blackwell.

10.

Clark

M. S.

Mills

(1993). The difference between communal and exchange relationships: What it is and is not. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 684–691.

11.

Clark

M. S.

Mills

Powell

M. C.

(1986). Keeping track of needs in communal and exchange relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 333–338.

12.

Clark

M. S.

Mills

J. R.

(2012). A theory of communal (and exchange) relationships. In VanLange

P. A. M.

Kruglanski

A. W.

Higgins

T. E.

(Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 232–250). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

13.

Feeney

B. C.

Collins

N. L.

(2015). A new look at social support: A theoretical perspective on thriving through relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 19, 113–147.

14.

Finkel

E. J.

Campbell

W. K.

Buffardi

L. E.

Kumashiro

Rusbult

C. E.

(2009). The metamorphosis of narcissus: Communal activation promotes relationship commitment among narcissists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1271–1284.

15.

Finkel

E. J.

Hui

C. M.

Carswell

K. L.

Larson

G. M.

(2014). The suffocation of marriage: Climbing Mount Maslow without enough oxygen. Psychological Inquiry, 25, 1–41.

16.

Fishbach

Koo

Finkelstein

S. R.

(2014). Motivation resulting from completed and missing actions. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 257–307.

17.

Fiske

A. P.

(1992). The four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review, 99, 689–723.

18.

Fitzsimons

G. M.

Finkel

E. J.

VanDellen

M. R.

(2015). Transactive goal dynamics. Psychological Review, 122, 648–664.

19.

Gleason

M. E. J.

Iida

Bolger

Shrout

P. E.

(2003). Daily supportive equity in close relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1036–1045.

20.

Hofmann

Finkel

E. J.

Fitzsimons

G. M.

(2015). Close relationships and self-regualtion: How relationship satisfaction facilitates momentary goal pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 434–452.

21.

Hui

C. M.

Finkel

E. J.

Fitzsimons

G. M.

Kumashiro

Hofmann

(2014). The Manhattan effect: When relationship commitment fails to promote support for partners’ interests. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 546–570.

22.

Kenny

D. A.

Kashy

D. A.

Cook

W. L.

(2006). Dyadic data analysis. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

23.

Kogan

Impett

E. A.

Oveis

Hui

Gordon

A. M.

Keltner

(2010). When giving feels good: The intrinsic benefits of sacrifice in romantic relationships for the communally motivated. Psychological Science, 21, 1918–1924.

24.

Kumashiro

Rusbult

C. E.

Finkel

E. J.

(2008). Navigating personal and relational concerns: The quest for equilibrium. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 94–110.

25.

Kurzban

Burton-Chellew

M. N.

West

S. A.

(2015). The evolution of altruism in humans. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 575–599.

26.

B. M.

Impett

E. A.

Kogan

Webster

G. D.

Cheng

(2012). The personal and interpersonal rewards of communal orientation. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30, 694–710.

27.

B. M.

Impett

E. A.

Lemay

E. P.

Muise

Tskhay

K. O.

(2018). Communal motivation and well-being in interpersonal relationships: An integrative review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 144, 1–25.

28.

Maner

J. K.

Gailliot

M. T.

(2007). Altruism and egoism: Prosocial motivations for helping depend on relationship context. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 347–358.

29.

Mattingly

B. A.

Oswald

D. L.

Clark

E. M.

(2011). An examination of relational-interdependent self-construal, communal strength, and pro-relationship behaviors in friendships. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 1243–1248.

30.

Mills

Clark

M. S.

(2001). Viewing close romantic relationships as communal relationships: Implications for maintenance and enhancement. In Close romantic relationships: Maintenance and enhancement (pp. 13–25). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

31.

Mills

Clark

M. S.

Ford

T. E.

Johnson

(2004). Measurement of communal strength. Personal Relationships, 11, 213–230.

32.

Mullen

Monin

(2016). Consistency versus licensing effects of past moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 363–385.

33.

Murray

S. L.

Holmes

J. G.

(2009). The architecture of interdependent minds: A motivation-management theory of mutual responsiveness. Psychological Review, 116, 908–928.

34.

Reis

H. T.

Gable

S. L.

(2015). Responsiveness. Current Opinion in Psychology, 1, 67–71.

35.

Rusbult

C. E.

Buunk

B. P.

(1993). Commitment processes in close relationships: An interdependence analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 10, 175–204.

36.

Slotter

E. B.

Duffy

C. W.

Gardner

W. L.

(2014). Balancing the need to be “me” with the need to be “we”: Applying optimal distinctiveness theory to the understanding of multiple motives within romantic relationships. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 71–81.

37.

Spybrook

Bloom

Congdon

Hill

Martinez

Raudenbush

(2011). Optimal design for longitudinal and multilevel research: Documentation for the “Optimal Design” software (through version 3.0). Retrieved from http://hlmsoft.net/od/od-manual-20111016-v300.pdf

38.

Visserman

M. L.

Righetti

Impett

E. A.

Keltner

VanLange

P. A. M.

(2017). It’s the motive that counts: Perceived sacrifice motives and gratitude in romantic relationships. Emotion, 18, 625–637.

39.

Wieselquist

Rusbult

C. E.

Foster

C. A.

Agnew

C. R.

(1999). Commitment, pro-relationship behavior, and trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 942–966.

40.

Yoo

S. H.

Clark

M. S.

Lemay

E. P.

Salovey

Monin

J. K.

(2011). Responding to partners’ expression of anger: The role of communal motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 229–241.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.05 MB

The Roles of Communal Motivation in Daily Prosocial Behaviors: A Dyadic Experience-Sampling Study

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material