The Commitment-Insurance System: Self-Esteem and the Regulation of Connection in Close Relationships

A levels of processing model of the commitment-insurance system is described to explain how low and high self-esteem people cope with the interdependence dilemma posed by ensuring that a partner's commitment is commensurate with their own. Two levels to this system are detailed: (1) the procedural rules that govern perception and behavior without conscious awareness and regardless of self-esteem and (2) the controlled or deliberated rules that govern perception and behavior differentially as a function of self-esteem. In the automatic rule system, feeling as valuable as the partner signals the partner's intrinsic motivation to be responsive, and thus the safety of seeking connection. In contrast, feeling inferior activates an exchange script specifying that partners need to match in desirability to avoid being replaced. Once activated, exchange concerns then motivate reparative behavioral efforts to secure the partner's dependence, thereby soliciting a supplementary, instrumental form of commitment-insurance against rejection and nonresponsiveness to need. In the controlled rule system, optimistic chronic expectations of acceptance allow high, but now low, self-esteem people to override the application of these automatic contingencies. Research supporting the model is reviewed and provides the basis for delineating a novel formulation of interdependence theory.