Committed to maintain: A brief measure of maintenance-oriented relationship commitment (MORC)

Abstract

Personal commitment, or individual’s intrinsic attitudes toward the long-term development of the relationship, is known to predict relationship stability, and its capacity to motivate relationship maintenance behaviors likely accounts for these beneficial effects. However, commitment in relationships has been assessed typically as a global dimension, confounding efforts to differentiate it from relationship satisfaction and to evaluate how it might be linked to behaviors relevant for relationship maintenance. To address these shortcomings, the current article presents a brief measure devised specifically to assess a person’s motivation to routinely engage in relationship maintenance. Using data from two studies involving Italian (N = 320) and Swiss samples (N = 120), we evaluated the psychometric properties of the scale. The results confirmed a single-factor solution with metric invariance across the two samples for five of six items. Significant associations with reports on positive and negative interpersonal behaviors relevant to relationship maintenance supported the validity of the scale.