The investment model of commitment: examining asexual and aromantic populations using confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis

ABSTRACT

Past research on the Investment Model of Commitment suggests that satisfaction, quality of alternatives, and investment consistently predict commitment levels in romantic relationships. Previous research examining the Investment Model has focused on allosexual and alloromantic populations – i.e. individuals who experience sexual and romantic attraction, respectively. We extended this research to asexual and aromantic individuals. Asexual and aromantic participants in relationships completed the four Investment Model subscales (i.e. satisfaction, investments, quality of alternatives, commitment). A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that the model fit to the original Investment Model factors was poor. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed that the investments and quality of alternatives items mostly loaded on the original factors; however, satisfaction items and commitment items mostly loaded on the same factor. These results suggest that asexual and aromantic individuals may not distinguish between relationship satisfaction and commitment, or individuals may have relatively equal amounts of satisfaction and commitment in their relationships. In addition, many asexual and aromantic individuals practice non-monogamous relationships, and have a higher quality of alternatives than those who practice monogamous relationships. Ultimately, the findings could guide practitioners when working with asexual and aromantic individuals as well as future research focusing on these populations.

KEYWORDS:

• asexuality
• aromanticism
• investment model
• commitment
• factor analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Additional Measures that were presented to participants included Relationship Assessment Scale (Hendrick, 1988), Relational Maintenance Behavior Measure (Stafford, 2011), and Cheating Index (Kruger et al., 2013).