Principle of least interest  The Principle of Least Interest is the idea in sociology that the person or group that has the least amount of interest in continuing a relationship has the most power over it. In the context of relationship dynamics, it suggests towards which party the balance of power tilts. The principle applies to personal, business, and other types of relationships where more than one party is involved. The term originated in 1938 by the sociologist Willard Waller in his book "The Family: A Dynamic Interpretation." Throughout his research Willard found that power in a dating couple is almost never equally distributed between the two participants. One person for any variety of possible reasons will have more power in the relationship. One of the ways Willard proposed for this uneven balance was the Principle of Least Interest. In a relationship with uneven power distribution, one of the partners gets more out of a relationship, be it emotionally, physically, or monetarily than the other. The partner who receives less has less incentive to continue the relationship and therefore at the most extreme can threaten to end the relationship so that the other person bends to their demands. For the person making the demands this is of little consequence to them. For the other party however, it might be a much larger issue. This is the basis for the ideas behind principle of least interest. The first major study to test the principle came in 1972 in a paper by Kenneth Eslinger, Alfred D Clarke and Russell R Dynes. In the paper the researchers interviewed 113 randomly selected college students that were enrolled in sociology courses to find out if a difference in emotional involvement existed in relationships and whether or not the level of involvement was affected by how the person was raised. The methods of raising kids that were covered by the study were bureaucratically or entrepreneurially. The study confirmed that was a difference involvement between how you were raised and how involved in a relationship you were. Furthermore, the study showed a large gap in involvement between males and females with the lowest female mean score four points higher than the highest male mean score. This showed that males as a group were significantly less interested in maintaining their relationship and could use the principle of least interest to their own means. These studies were further reinforced in 1984 by a study that focused on the balance of power in lesbian relationships. Nearly 40% of those taking part reported an unequal balance of power. Furthermore, those who reported an unequal balance of power reported that they felt the person who was less dependent on the relationship had more power. In 1994 a study of 413 heterosexual American adults found correlations between the power balance between the partners and the emotional involvement of them to be both negative and significant.