{"title":"How Do Invested Partners Become Invested? A Prospective Investigation of Fledgling Relationship Development.","authors":"Samantha Joel, Laura Machia","doi":"10.1177/01461672231224351","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Investment-the feeling that one has put considerable resources into a relationship-is theorized to play a key role in relationship persistence. Yet, the development of investment is not well-understood. We recruited 256 individuals in new dating relationships and surveyed them each week for up to 25 weeks. This design allows us to test underlying theoretical assumptions about how people become invested in new dating partners. Some assumptions, such as the idea that investment increases over time, were confirmed. Other assumptions were not supported: Feelings of investment were quite high after only a few weeks of dating and were not strongly shaped by concrete relationship milestones. Rather, feelings of investment were strongly linked to other subjective indicators of relationship development, such as feeling attached to the partner and believing that the relationship had a good future. We discuss the implications of these findings for existing models of investment.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"1689-1702"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672231224351","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/2/7 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Investment-the feeling that one has put considerable resources into a relationship-is theorized to play a key role in relationship persistence. Yet, the development of investment is not well-understood. We recruited 256 individuals in new dating relationships and surveyed them each week for up to 25 weeks. This design allows us to test underlying theoretical assumptions about how people become invested in new dating partners. Some assumptions, such as the idea that investment increases over time, were confirmed. Other assumptions were not supported: Feelings of investment were quite high after only a few weeks of dating and were not strongly shaped by concrete relationship milestones. Rather, feelings of investment were strongly linked to other subjective indicators of relationship development, such as feeling attached to the partner and believing that the relationship had a good future. We discuss the implications of these findings for existing models of investment.
期刊介绍：
The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin is the official journal for the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. The journal is an international outlet for original empirical papers in all areas of personality and social psychology.
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