550 Justice, Equity, and Fairness in Human Relations
Lerner found that, for respondents who believe that they are
in an identity relation with their partner, satisfaction with the
relationship correlates higher with the partner’s outcomes
than with the respondent’s own outcomes.
Lerner’s distinction of an identity relationship from a unit
and a nonunit relationship (Lerner & Whitehead, 1980) corre-
sponds to Clark and Mills’ distinction between the communal-
versus the exchange-norm orientation in intimate partnerships
(1979). The communal-norm orientation means feeling
responsible for and being responsive to the other’s needs
without expecting repayment. It is satisfying enough to meet
the other’s needs. The partner’s outcomes are no less impor-
tant than one’s own outcomes; on the contrary, they take
precedence. Extending the authors’ argumentation slightly,
the following could be stated: Whereas with exchange-norm
orientations, outcomes (benefits) are balanced against inputs
(costs), in communal-norm orientations the ratio between out-
comes and costs is not decisive because one’s own inputs are
viewed not as costs, but rather as welcome opportunities to
meet the partner’s needs. Any ensuing rewards are interpreted
not as profits on one’s own investments, but rather as an
expression of the partner’s affection and love.
However, conflicts are not unusual in close relationships,
and because these conflicts are essentially justice conflicts, it
is worthwhile to examine which justice principles are applied
when conflicts occur. As long as an identity relation exists, all
investments, all self-sacrifices, and all burdens are not bal-
anced with one’s outcomes, but the balances may be made
when the partner withdraws his or her love (Montada & Kals,
2001).
Research by Cate and colleagues (Cate, Lloyd, Henton, &
Larson, 1982; Cate, Lloyd, & Henton, 1985) and Desmarais
and Lerner (1989) has shown that the level of received re-
wards (e.g., in the six resource areas of love, status, services,
goods, money, and information) predicts relationship satis-
faction better than does global equity (and equality as well),
regardless of whether the relationship is traditional or modern
in terms of gender-role orientation (M. W. Martin, 1985). Do
these findings mean that self-interest is the dominant motive
in close relationships? To answer this question, the partner’s
rewards (stemming from the respondents’ own responses to
their partner’s needs) also need to be assessed. It may well be
that those relationships that both partners experience as re-
warding are satisfying. One kind of empirical findings seems
to support this interpretation: Rusbult (1987) and Hays
(1985) found that own rewards minus costs (investments)
predict relationship success less well than own rewardsplus
costs (which may mean the partner’s rewards). The latter
index may reflect the mutual responsiveness of the partners to
each other’s needs (Clark & Chrisman, 1994).
An exchange orientation implies the normative expectation
that one’s own investments (definable as the material, social,
and personality resources one brings into the relationship) will
be repaid or yield profits—if not immediately, then in the long
run. This economic view of close relationships would suggest
that partners keep track of their own investments and out-
comes and—in the equity version of the model—of their part-
ner’s as well. The few studies investigating this aspect have
found that respondents who desire or already have communal
relationships do not tend to keep track of the respective invest-
ments and outcomes (Clark & Chrisman, 1994). Furthermore,
as shown by Grote and Clark (1998), communal relationships
represent the widely preferred ideal for partnerships. In the
same study, these authors found the perceived fairness of the
distribution of housework and child-care responsibilities to
be positively related to adherence to communal norms in the
partnership (for women) and negatively related to an adher-
ence to exchange norms (for men and women).
However, it is open to question whether the responsive-
ness to the other’s needs, which is typical for a communal
orientation, is motivated by love, sympathy, altruism, or jus-
tice. The justice motive implies an awareness of the partner’s
entitlements and of one’s own perceived obligations. Love
and sympathy, same as altruism, may motivate to satisfy the
other’s desires and needs without conceiving these as entitle-
ments and without feeling obliged to do that. In social rela-
tionships, applying the need principle of justice, feeling
sympathy with the needs of the loved one, and being altruis-
tic may motivate an actor to choose the same behavioral com-
mitments. Nevertheless, the justice motive and sympathy,
altruism, and love are distinct motives, and conflicts between
them may occur or be induced (cf. Batson, 1996). The behav-
ioral commitments are not informative with respect to the
question how they are motivated. We need valid assessments
of the actors’ motives behind their responses to the needs of a
loved one. To assume a justice motive, one has, at least, to
ask respondents explicitly about the others’ entitlements or
their deservingness. Another approach is to observe or ask
respondents about their emotions that imply perceived own
violations of justice norms, namely feelings of guilt or of
indebtedness—and to explore the justice appraisals assumed
to be necessary components of these emotions.
The justice motive may also be inferred from resentment
of the partner. Freudenthaler and Mikula (1998) offer an ex-
ample of this approach with their investigation of women’s
sense of injustice regarding the unbalanced division of
housework. In their interview study with employed women
living in a partnership, perceived violations of entitlement are
predicted by four variables related to household chores: un-
fulfilled wants, social comparisons of their partner’s with