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Conceptual frameworks are often organized around a metaphor (Gergen et al., 1980). When the metaphor is powerful and embraced by the culture, the framework is easily understood and readily adapted to explain a wide range of phenomenon. During the 1960s, the social exchange framework was formally advanced in the work of sociologists George Homans (1961) and Peter Blau (1964a) and the work of social psychologists John Thibaut and Harold Kelley (1959). Each of these perspectives make use of an economic metaphor. They view social relationships as extended "markets' in which each individual acts out of self-interest with the goal of maximizing profits. Thibaut and Kelley assert, for example, that "… every individual voluntarily enters and stays in any relationship only as long as it is adequately satisfactory in terms of his rewards and costs' (1959, p. 37). Likewise, Homans asserts that "… the open secret of human exchange is to give the other man behavior that is more valuable to him than it is costly to you and to get from him behavior that is more valuable to you than it is costly to him" (1961, p. 62).

DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-85764-0_16

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