Commitment, Predictors and Outcomes

Predicting Whether Relationships Last

The sine qua non for relationship commitment has been its ability to predict relationship persistence. Data from thousands of participants in dating relationships (who break up at higher rates in shorter time periods than married people) reveal a strong association between relationship commitment and persistence. However, in these types of relationships, satisfaction is highly correlated with commitment, prompting the question of whether it is truly commitment or instead satisfaction that accounts for persistence. Statistical procedures that allow researchers to compare commitment and satisfaction simultaneously find that commitment predicts persistence above and beyond satisfaction, whereas the ability of satisfaction to predict persistence controlling for commitment is weak at best. Remarkably, one study showed that commitment, [Page 241]rather than satisfaction, predicted whether relationships remained intact 15 years later.

Despite the ability of commitment to predict persistence controlling for relationship satisfaction, the overlap between commitment and satisfaction has often left the wider research community a little skeptical about relationship commitment. Moreover, there has been some suggestion that the use of self-report methods may inflate the degree of overlap because people often use their general evaluation of a relationship as positive or negative (satisfaction) to guide answers to other relationship questions (such as commitment): “If the relationship is good, then I must be committed to it.” Prototype analyses of lay conceptions have established that, although commitment and satisfaction are indeed overlapping constructs, they are nevertheless distinct. The challenge for research has been to find ways to disentangle commitment from satisfaction in order to learn more precisely how each of them influences relationships.

One strategy to address the commitment-satisfaction overlap has been to identify or induce experimental situations that provide a stress test of the relationship. The idea is that when the relationship is not easy to maintain, a person may think more carefully about the relationship and ask, “Even though this is not a lot of fun right now, am I prepared to stick with it and work at it?” Alternatively, when faced with a relationship transition, a person faced with an uncertain relationship future may ask, “Even though the relationship is great right now (high satisfaction), am I committed enough to sacrifice a school or job opportunity to move to another city with my partner?” One naturally occurring stress test of commitment occurs when a person leaves home and dating partner to attend a university. In such a context, commitment and satisfaction are weakly correlated, and commitment predicts relationship persistence better than does satisfaction.

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