“You’re a cad if you break up around Christmas. And then there’s New Year’s — and you can’t dump somebody right around New Year’s. After that, if you don’t jump on it, is Valentine’s Day,” Savage says. “God forbid if their birthday should fall somewhere between November and February — then you’re really stuck.
“Thanksgiving is really when you have to pull the trigger if you’re not willing to tough it out through February.”
That’s from a story I heard on NPR about turkey dropping: the spike in break-ups at Thanksgiving followed by a steady period (for the surviving pairs) through the Winter months. If there is a social stigma against cutting it off between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day, then there may be value in that. Often social rules emerge arbitrarily but persist only if they serve a purpose, even if that purpose is unrelated to the spirit of the social norm. The post-turkey taboo plays the role of a temporary commitment that can strengthen those relationships that are still worth maintaining.
The value of a relationship fluctuates over time. Not just the total value of the partnership relative to autarky but also the value to the individual of remaining committed. The strength of a relationship is precisely measured by the maximum temptation each partner is willing to forego to keep it alive. The moment a jucier temptation appears, the relationship is doomed.
Unless there is commitment. Commitment is a way of pooling incentive constraints. A relationship becomes stronger if each partner can somehow commit in advance to resist all temptations that will arise over the length of the commitment. This transforms your obligation. Now the strength of the relationship is equal to the expected temptation rather than the most severe temptation actually realized. A social stigma against ending the relationship over certain intervals of time aids such a commitment.
Its good that commitments are temporary, but you want their beginning and end dates to be arbitrary, or at least independent of the arrival process of temptations. The total value of the relationship also fluctuates and you want the freedom to end the relationship when it begins to lag the value of being single. This is especially true in the early stages when there is still a lot to learn about the match. Over time when the value of the relationship has clarified, the length of commitment intervals should increase.
Commitments can also solve an unraveling problem. If you know that your partner will succumb to a juciy temptation and you know that its just a matter of time before a juicy temptation arrives, you become willing to give over to a just-a-little-juicy temptation. Knowing this, she is poised to give it up for just about anything. The commitment short-circuits this at the first step.
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November 29, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Karl Katzke
Funny to see something on an economics blog about relationships… take a listen to the song by John Mayer called “St. Patrick’s Day” — although that song contradicts the Turkey Droppings trend because “No one wants to be alone at Christmas Time / Come January we’re frozen in time / Making new resolutions one hundred times / February won’t be my valentine / And we’ll both be safe ’till St. Patrick’s Day”
November 30, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Xan
Economics-applied-to-noneconomics is getting a lot of attention these days, but economists have been doing this sort of thing for a long time, and there isn’t really something strange about it. It is better to think of economics as a box of tools than a box of subjects; if the tools happen to apply, why not use them?
There is only the question: Does economics have something interesting to say about this topic, or not? Frequently the answer is yes! This seems to be one of those cases: what an interesting post!
November 30, 2009 at 8:18 am
devilyouknow
Depending on how the data was gathered, the conclusion may be showing a point effect. As I recall from freshman year in college, high school sweethearts tended to last until the first trip home, which typically occurred at Thanksgiving.
November 30, 2009 at 9:15 am
Brandon
One would expect the arrival rate of temptations be highest at Christmas and New Years. People are gathering for parties and get-togethers.
It may be that entering a relationship with someone who recently exiting another relationship also has some additional cost (eg. will the break-up stick or no one wants to be viewed as the “rebound”). This cost likely has a high depreciation rate and may be near zero within a month. The individual in relationship may know the expected temptation will be higher at Christmas and New Years simply because there are more events. She also may know that there is a cost to recently exiting a relationship, so she makes a cost-benefits decisions to exit the relationship at Thanksgiving.
In this version of the story, commitment mechanisms due to social stigma don’t really have a role. It is just timing and rational calculus. By the time January roles around, the expected temptation will be low as there are no parties.
November 30, 2009 at 6:17 pm
stickymouth
Any difference between cold and hot climates? Maybe it’s just seasonal affection disorder.