Commitment signals in friendship and romantic relationships

Abstract

a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oDue to the ever-present allure of potentially more appealing or attractive partners, people in mutually committed relationships face a commitment problem (i.e., uncertainty about partner fidelity). This problem exists for both friendship and romantic relationships. In an exploratory pilot study, participants described real-life commitment-confirming incidents in either friendship or romantic relationships. The results revealed that the same types of pro-relationship acts (e.g., throwing a surprise party) were used to communicate commitment to one's partner in both types of relationship. Using signaling theory, we predicted that costly commitment signals would be more effective than non-costly commitment signals (Hypothesis 1). Also, we predicted that failure to engage in such behaviors would communicate non-commitment, and that such failures would have a more detrimental effect on romantic relationships than friendship (Hypothesis 2). Two scenario experiments (study 1 in Japan and study 2 in the U.S.) were conducted to test these hypotheses. The results showed that costly commitment signals were more effective than non-costly commitment signals in both Japan and the U.S. In addition, the absence of situationally appropriate commitment signals (e.g., forgetting a special occasion) was substantially more damaging to romantic relationships than to friendship.

Social Attention Promotes Partner Intimacy

“…For example, it is necessary to examine whether mutual friends or romantic partners in fact pay more attention to their intimate partners than to nonintimate others. As the signaling theory assumes the co-evolution of signal senders and receivers, it is also necessary to examine whether friends or romantic partners accurately track their partner attention (see Yamaguchi et al, 2015, for suggestive evidence). Finally, the correlation between A's attention and B's intimacy in real relationships must be assessed.…”

Role of the Orbitofrontal Cortex in the Computation of Relationship Value

“…Accordingly, Bliege Bird et al (2018) proposed that the primary function of such sharing is to signal one's commitment to the relationship and thus reaffirm the existing relationship. A possible counterpart of such day-today sharing in modern, industrialized societies may be exchanges of pro-relationship behaviors (Yamaguchi et al, 2015(Yamaguchi et al, , 2017. For example, listening to a friend's personal problems for a long period and planning/ throwing a surprise party for a friend's birthday serve as commitment signals; recipients of such prorelationship behaviors, which are costly in terms of time spent by the signalers listening or planning, tend to upregulate the relationship value of the signalers (Yamaguchi et al, 2015(Yamaguchi et al, , 2017.…”

“…A possible counterpart of such day-today sharing in modern, industrialized societies may be exchanges of pro-relationship behaviors (Yamaguchi et al, 2015(Yamaguchi et al, , 2017. For example, listening to a friend's personal problems for a long period and planning/ throwing a surprise party for a friend's birthday serve as commitment signals; recipients of such prorelationship behaviors, which are costly in terms of time spent by the signalers listening or planning, tend to upregulate the relationship value of the signalers (Yamaguchi et al, 2015(Yamaguchi et al, , 2017. This result is reasonable because spending one's time on a particular friend prohibits the signalers from interacting with other potential partners, therefore clearly demonstrating their commitment to their friendship (Dunbar, 2018;Miritello et al, 2013;Sutcliffe et al, 2012; for the effect of cost involved in signals, see Laidre & Johnstone, 2013).…”

Mortality Salience and Mobile Voice Calling: A Case of a Massive Natural Disaster

“…However, the fact that voice calls-the oldest mode of mobile communication-were utilized indicates that they still function effectively to cope with increased MS. Although voice calls are costlier than emails or social media in terms of the time and bandwidth required (Takano & Fukuda, 2017), this high cost could be considered a sign of commitment to the close ties who were contacted (Yamaguchi et al, 2015). Therefore, although smartphones are currently in widespread use and have vastly superior communication functionalities over traditional telephones, people utilize media that meet their particular needs, including using voice calls to cope with MS.…”