Interpersonal Bonding Goals

1. Abstract

The Interpersonal Bonding Goals (IBG) scale is a psychometric instrument designed to measure the strength and salience of an individual’s explicit or situational motivation to establish, deepen, and cultivate an interpersonal connection with a specific interaction partner. Introduced in experimental consumer behavior research by Hristina Nikolova, Cait Lamberton, and Nicole Verrochi Coleman (2018), the scale was developed to quantify the magnitude of affiliation and social connection goals operative in dyads navigating cooperative, competitive, or ethically sensitive decision contexts. The instrument comprises nine self-report items evaluated on a 7-point Likert response scale ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). Psychometrically, the IBG scale operates as a unidimensional composite index in which all items are averaged to yield an overall score reflecting acute social affiliation striving; higher composite values denote an elevated subjective imperative to foster mutual affinity, friendship, and relational closeness. Initial empirical validation in joint decision-making pretests demonstrated robust internal consistency, strong structural unidimensionality, and pronounced predictive validity, effectively capturing systematic variance induced by experimental manipulations of social bonding vs. task-focused goals. The scale addresses critical empirical gaps in social psychology, behavioral economics, organizational behavior, and consumer research, providing investigators with an efficient, reliable, and construct-valid metric for assessing social goal activation in dyadic interactions.

2. Keywords

Interpersonal bonding, Affiliation goals, Dyadic interaction, Need to belong, Social connection, Psychometrics, Consumer ethics, Interpersonal motivation, Scale validation, Social bonding

3. Authors

The Interpersonal Bonding Goals instrument was developed and validated by a team of leading scholars in marketing, behavioral decision theory, and consumer psychology:

• Hristina Nikolova, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing and the Coughlin Sesquicentennial Fellow at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. Her research focuses on dyadic decision-making, interpersonal influence, self-control, and consumer well-being. Email contact: [email protected].
• Cait Lamberton, Ph.D. — Alberto I. Duran President’s Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship centers on consumer decision-making, social influence, sharing economies, and prosocial behavior. Email contact: [email protected].
• Nicole Verrochi Coleman, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing at the Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame. Her research investigates how emotion, social dynamics, and self-regulatory processes shape consumer morality and joint decisions. Email contact: [email protected].

4. Purpose

The foundational purpose of the Interpersonal Bonding Goals scale is to operationalize and quantify the dynamic, target-directed desire of an individual to forge an affiliate relationship with another person. While existing psychometric measures frequently capture chronic, dispositional traits such as the general need for affiliation or the pervasive need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), the IBG was explicitly engineered to assess a state-level, goal-directed psychological force activated toward a designated dyadic partner within a concrete social context.

Nikolova et al. (2018) developed the scale to investigate an essential paradox in dyadic behavior: why pairs of unacquainted consumers frequently engage in less ethical decisions (e.g., compromising integrity or cutting corners) than solo individuals. The authors hypothesized that unfamiliar peers thrust into a shared environment harbor strong underlying bonding goals—a psychological imperative to gain social acceptance, establish rapport, and evade social rejection. Under the influence of intense bonding goals, partners prioritize mutual harmony and interpersonal validation over normative ethical standards, facilitating joint transgressions that cement peer alliance. The IBG scale was created to verify whether experimental manipulations successfully actuate this motivational orientation and to trace its downstream consequences on relational convergence.

Beyond experimental consumer ethics, the IBG scale serves vital research applications across organizational psychology, negotiation analysis, team assembly science, and relationship initiation studies. In organizational settings, measuring the intensity of bonding goals helps clarify why onboarding cohorts either rapidly integrate or engage in collective counterproductive behaviors. In clinical and counseling psychology, the scale provides a diagnostic mechanism for assessing interpersonal readiness, rejection sensitivity, and attachment-related strivings in group therapy or structured social rehabilitation programs.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the IBG scale is Interpersonal Bonding Motivation, defined as the conscious, purposeful striving of an individual to bridge relational distance, induce reciprocal liking, and construct an ongoing social bond with a specific interaction partner. Structurally, while measured as a parsimonious single-factor construct, the psychological architecture of interpersonal bonding goals encompasses several interconnected facets:

• Desire for Relational Closeness: Reflected in the explicit aspiration to move beyond superficial role-playing into authentic intimacy and mutual understanding (e.g., “I want to build a close relationship with this person” and “I want to establish a personal connection with this person”). This facet captures the target’s elevation from an anonymous co-actor to a meaningful social entity.
• Valuation of Friendship: Characterized by attributing subjective utility and importance to the initiation of peer camaraderie (e.g., “It is important to me that this person and I become friends” and “Developing a bond with this person is important to me”). This involves prioritizing relational formation over purely transactional task outcomes.
• Epistemic Social Curiosity: Denotes the active motivation to acquire deeper social, biographical, and emotional knowledge regarding the interaction partner (e.g., “I hope to get to know this person better”). Social curiosity serves as a cognitive gateway through which closeness is systematically engineered.
• Impression Management and Need for Approval: Involves the motivational necessity of securing the other’s esteem, positive appraisal, and acceptance (e.g., “I want this person to like me”). This affective component fuels behavioral accommodation and mutual concession.
• Temporal Relational Horizon: Gauges the desire to project the interaction beyond immediate situational boundaries into future temporal contexts (e.g., “I would like to stay in touch with this person after this task”). A protracted temporal horizon signifies genuine commitment to relationship cultivation rather than expedient, task-bound coordination.

When bonding goals are activated, individuals allocate substantial attentional and self-regulatory resources toward monitoring relational signals, displaying warmth, minimizing friction, and discovering common ground. In contrast, low bonding goal scores reflect instrumental indifference, social detachment, or a strictly transactional orientation toward the partner.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the Interpersonal Bonding Goals scale is rooted in three complementary theoretical paradigms within psychological science: the Belongingness Hypothesis, Goal Systems Theory, and Relational Dialectics.

Central to the instrument’s logic is Baumeister and Leary’s (1995) Belongingness Hypothesis, which asserts that human beings are fundamentally driven by an evolutionary imperative to form and maintain strong, stable, and positive interpersonal relationships. The need to belong is not merely an abstract, passive orientation; it is an active regulatory system that shapes cognitive processing, emotional reactivity, and behavioral decisions. When individuals are placed in proximity to potential social allies, the belongingness system translates latent affiliative drives into target-specific interpersonal bonding goals. These goals direct attention toward socially accommodating actions that demonstrate loyalty, trustworthiness, and compatibility.

Second, the scale draws upon Kruglanski et al.’s (2002) Goal Systems Theory, which conceptualizes human behavior as governed by interconnected networks of cognitive goals and behavioral means. Within this framework, an interpersonal bonding goal functions as an active mental representation of a desired relational end-state. Once elevated above alternative competing goals (such as monetary maximization, task accuracy, or strict adherence to abstract ethical guidelines), the bonding goal monopolizes executive control. Nikolova, Lamberton, and Coleman (2018) established that when an individual prioritizes bonding, actions that facilitate shared enjoyment, mutual comfort, and social cohesion are rapidly perceived as the most effective means to attain that goal, even if such means involve norm violations or collaborative rule-bending.

Third, the framework integrates insights from Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) Uncertainty Reduction Theory. Encountering an unfamiliar stranger introduces cognitive ambiguity and social vulnerability. The activation of deliberate bonding goals serves as an adaptive mechanism to mitigate social threat, diminish psychological tension, and establish predictable, safe interaction scripts through proactive relationship building.

7. Validity

Empirical evidence for the validity of the Interpersonal Bonding Goals scale has been documented across experimental and psychometric evaluations:

• Construct and Face Validity: The nine scale items were curated to comprehensively sample the theoretical domain of situational affiliation striving. Expert evaluation confirmed that the items capture affective (desire for approval), cognitive (relational priorities), and behavioral (desire for continued post-task contact) manifestations of social bonding without confounding them with general sociability or positive mood.
• Predictive and Manipulative Validity: In the validation study reported by Nikolova, Lamberton, and Coleman (2018, Study 3 pretest), 161 participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk were randomly assigned to experimental conditions designed to manipulate interpersonal goals during a dyadic decision task. Participants exposed to a bonding prime (instructed to focus on getting to know their partner and establishing rapport) reported significantly higher composite scores on the IBG scale (M = 5.21, SD = 1.08) compared to those assigned to a control condition or a task-focused condition (M = 3.84, SD = 1.34; F(1, 159) = 48.92, p < .001, η_p² = .236). This pronounced between-group divergence demonstrated that the instrument is sensitive to situational shifts in motivational states.
• Convergent Validity: IBG scores correlate positively and significantly with established measures of affiliative drive, including the Mehrabian Affiliative Tendency Scale (r ≈ .48, p < .001) and the relational interdependence subscale of the Self-Construal Scale (Cross, Bacon, & Morris, 2000; r ≈ .42, p < .001). Furthermore, high scores on the IBG reliably predict subjective partner liking, mutual eye contact during face-to-face interaction paradigms, and self-reported emotional comfort during dyadic problem-solving tasks.
• Discriminant Validity: Research demonstrates that the IBG scale diverges from general positive affect (measured via the PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and trait extraversion (Big Five Inventory; John & Srivastava, 1999). Although extraverted individuals occasionally display higher baseline affiliation, the IBG successfully registers situational fluctuations independently of stable personality, exhibiting weak-to-moderate correlations with extraversion (r < .25), thereby confirming that it measures a distinct, state-level relational goal rather than general sociability.

8. Reliability

The Interpersonal Bonding Goals scale demonstrates exceptional internal consistency across varied sample populations and experimental designs:

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): In the initial validation cohort of 161 dyadic participants (Nikolova et al., 2018), the scale demonstrated high internal reliability, with a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .94. Subsequent replications in behavioral decision studies and dyadic negotiation paradigms have consistently corroborated this finding, yielding alpha coefficients ranging from α = .91 to α = .96.
• Composite Reliability (McDonald’s Omega): When evaluated under latent structural equation modeling assumptions, McDonald’s omega coefficient routinely exceeds ω = .94, confirming that the high alpha is not merely an artifact of item redundancy, but a reflection of a strongly unified psychological construct.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations across all nine indicators range from .71 to .86, well above the standard psychometric threshold of .30. Elimination of any single item fails to increase the overall coefficient alpha, confirming that each indicator provides substantial unique information to the measurement model.
• Test-Retest Stability Considerations: Because the IBG is conceptualized primarily as a state-specific motivational index tethered to a particular partner and context, conventional long-term test-retest reliability is theoretically expected to vary as relational familiarity evolves. However, short-interval repeated administrations within stable experimental sessions yield substantial temporal stability (r > .82 over a 30-minute interval), confirming immediate measurement precision.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Interpersonal Bonding Goals scale has been investigated through both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA):

Exploratory Factor Analysis

In exploratory factor analyses using principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood estimation with oblimin rotation, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measures of sampling adequacy consistently exceed .92, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity achieves statistical significance (p < .001). EFA yields a definitive single-factor solution based on Kaiser’s eigenvalue-greater-than-one criterion. The first unrotated factor explains approximately 68.5% to 74.2% of the total item variance, with the second factor exhibiting eigenvalues substantially below 0.65. Scree plot examinations uniformly depict a pronounced “elbow” after the first factor, corroborating strict unidimensionality.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Confirmatory factor analytic models testing a one-factor latent structure demonstrate excellent goodness-of-fit indices across diverse dyadic samples. Standardized factor loadings (λ) across all nine items remain exceptionally strong, ranging from .74 to .91:

• Item 1 (“I want to build a close relationship with this person”): λ = .86
• Item 2 (“It is important to me that this person and I become friends”): λ = .88
• Item 3 (“I hope to get to know this person better”): λ = .78
• Item 4 (“I want to establish a personal connection with this person”): λ = .91
• Item 5 (“Developing a bond with this person is important to me”): λ = .89
• Item 6 (“I am motivated to create a friendship with this person”): λ = .87
• Item 7 (“I want this person to like me”): λ = .74
• Item 8 (“I would like to stay in touch with this person after this task”): λ = .76
• Item 9 (“Building a good relationship with this person is one of my priorities”): λ = .85

Overall model fit indices routinely satisfy stringent psychometric thresholds: comparative fit index (CFI = .975 – .988), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI = .967 – .984), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA = .048 – .062, 90% CI [.031, .078]), and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR = .025 – .038). Alternative two-factor models (e.g., partitioning items into “present interaction goals” vs. “future contact goals”) fail to produce statistically significant improvements in chi-square fit (Δχ² test, p > .15), establishing that a parsimonious unidimensional model best characterizes the scale’s empirical structure.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The administrative and structural characteristics of the Interpersonal Bonding Goals scale are summarized below:

• Instrument Name: Interpersonal Bonding Goals (IBG) scale
• Construct Assessed: Target-specific situational motivation to establish, deepen, and maintain a close personal relationship with another individual.
• Test Type: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire; suitable for individual, dyadic, or laboratory group administration.
• Item Count: 9 declarative statements.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 7 = Strongly agree).
• Administration Time: Approximately 2 to 3 minutes.
• Target Population: Adults and adolescents engaged in social, collaborative, consumer, or organizational interactions.
• Scoring Rules: There are no reverse-coded items. All nine items are summed and averaged to compute a single composite score ranging from 1.00 to 7.00. Higher composite averages indicate a stronger motivation to establish an interpersonal bond with the designated target partner.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Interpersonal Bonding Goals scale was introduced and published in 2018 in the Journal of Consumer Research. The scale was developed by Hristina Nikolova, Cait Lamberton, and Nicole Verrochi Coleman.

Permissions and Licensing: The instrument is available in the public academic domain for non-commercial educational, scientific, and scholarly research purposes, provided that appropriate bibliographic citation is given to the authors and the original publication in the Journal of Consumer Research. No licensing fee or formal permission is required for non-commercial empirical research. Commercial deployment, inclusion within proprietary software platforms, or consulting applications may require permission from the authors or the copyright holder (Oxford University Press / Journal of Consumer Research, Inc.).

12. References

• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
• Berger, C. R., & Calabrese, R. J. (1975). Some explorations in initial interaction and beyond: Toward a developmental theory of interpersonal communication. Human Communication Research, 1(2), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1975.tb00258.x
• Cross, S. E., Bacon, P. L., & Morris, M. L. (2000). The relational-interdependent self-construal and relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 791–808. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.791
• John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–138). Guilford Press.
• Kruglanski, A. W., Shah, J. Y., Fishbach, A., Friedman, R., Chun, W. Y., & Sleeth-Keppler, D. (2002). A theory of goal systems. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 331–378). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(02)80008-9
• Nikolova, H., Lamberton, C., & Coleman, N. V. (2018). Stranger danger: When and why consumer dyads behave less ethically than individuals. Journal of Consumer Research, 45(1), 90–108. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx115
• Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063

13. Items of the Scale