The deprivation-satiation proposition implies that if a man has often received the reward, he begins to be satiated with it. Its value decreases for him, and by the value proposition, he becomes less apt to perform an action that is followed by this reward. Food is the best example.
The aggression-approval proposition implies that when a person doesn’t get what he expected, he is frustrated. When he is frustrated, he is apt to feel some anger. No doubt, the more valuable to a person is the reward he expected or the more painful the punishment he didn’t expect, the greater is his frustration and hence his anger. When a man is frustrated, he is apt to perform aggressive actions. These are actions that attack, break, hurt, or threaten the source of the frustration. The target of aggression may be an inanimate object though humans can also serve targets. When we are furious at someone and hit him, the sight of his wincing under our blow becomes intensely rewarding.
Social exchange theory explains interpersonal interaction, i. e. how we feel about a relationship with another person as depending on our perceptions of the balance between what we put into the relationship and what we get out of it. But the postulates of equal and mutually beneficial interaction known as balanced exchange can’t explain such phenomena as social inequality, coercion, or power. To do so G. Homans suggested the proposition of the least interest that states that a person, who is least interested in the continuation of exchange, possesses a greater ability to dictate the terms of this exchange to the interaction partners. The result of this kind of exchange is emergence of power because “one man can provide more rewards to the others than the latter can reward him”. The researcher asserts that any relations of power, even coercive ones, are examples of non-balanced exchange.
P. Blau’s version of exchange value makes a useful complement to Homans. He viewed social interactions from the other positions, those of structural exchange. The researcher stressed that behavioural propositions can explain people’s interactions at the micro-level when relations are oriented toward achieving the aim but this aim can be achieved only if partners interact with each other and they all have the means necessary to obtain the aim. Relations of power emerge when one of the interaction partners has monopolistic or exclusive rights to some reward which other partners are trying to get. In this case the owner will try to exchange the available reward at a higher cost possible, imposing his will on the other partners. But in order to be institutionalized, power must be legitimized on the basis of social norms and values constituting a particular cultural system, the latter not being connected with the exchange processes. In other words, P. Blau explains the essence of social interaction at the macro-level.
American sociologists have gone further in developing the theory within the framework of which social life can be treated as an exchange of rewards or resources between actors. Their main conclusion is that actors in exchange can be not only individuals but also groups, and that in-group processes and inter-group relations are more complex than being sets of market transactions.
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