Harnessing Social Exchange
The residue of game theory surfaced in social exchange models of conflict and negotiation. Similar to game theory, social exchange emulated an economic approach in which disputants held rational motives to maximize their own self-interests.
Unlike game theory, however, disputants maximized profits based on rewards minus costs that were derived from social resources. For communication scholars, social resources were symbolic (e.g., affection, status, control) and any given exchange had multiple resources involved. Social exchange, then, entailed an interaction process or a series of sequential behaviors in which disputants provided each other with resources through their interactions (Roloff & Campion, 1985).Critical to exchange theory was the notion of reciprocity, a concept that Bell (1979) identified in small group research. Reciprocity, first explicated by Gouldner (1960), typically referred to helping those who had helped you. Communication scholars invoked this norm by examining reciprocity in a number of ways, including obligations to exchange resources of equivalent value (Roloff & Campion, 1985), symmetrical message patterns in interpersonal and marital conflicts (Bavelas, Rogers, & Millar, 1985; Sillars, 1980b; Ting-Toomey, 1983), and matching integrative or distributive strategies in negotiations (Bednar & Curington, 1983; Donohue, 1981a; Putnam & Jones, 1982a) and divorce mediations (Jones, 1989a). Thus, the decline of game theory in the 1980s led the field to adopt modified versions of social exchange theory.