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Unformatted text preview: Conflict • Occurs whenever one person’s motives, goals, beliefs, opinions or behavior interfere with or are incompatible with those of another • Goals is the most motivating; more generally goals encompasses all the others • Can you have a fight without having conflict? NO. • Can you have conflict without having a fight? YES. • Dialectics: simultaneous, opposing motivations. You can have dialectical tension between: • Personal autonomy and close connection to others • Openness and closedness • Stability and change • Integration with and separation from a social network • Conflicts occur often. You can’t get through a relationship without conflict • Dating couples report 2.3 conflicts per week • Spouses report 1 -2 unpleasant disagreements each month • Disagreements happen more often when you’re: • Tired • Drunk • Hungry • (because you have less patience- less resources to get through the conflict) • Amount of conflict people experience is linked to: • Personality: people high in neuroticism have more conflicts. People high in agreeableness have fewer conflicts • Attachment: style: anxiety over abandonment makes conflict more threatening and more frequent • Stage of life: older couples have fewer conflicts • Similarity: the less similar partners are to each other, the more conflicts they experience • Alcohol: intoxication exacerbates conflict • Predisposing conditions: the other factors; what’s going on in the background • Types of events that cause the most conflict: • Criticism: behavior that seems unjustly critical, being perceived as demeaning or derogat- ory • Illegitimate demands: requests that are excessive and seem unjust • Rebuffs: occur when one’s appeals for help or support are rejected • Cumulative annoyances: relatively trivial events that become irritation with repetition • Attributional conflict: fighting over whose explanation is right and whose account is wrong • Misunderstanding may occur if partners fail to appreciate that each of them has his or her own point of view • If the issue is engaged and conflict begins: • Negotiation and rational problem-solving may occur • Escalation occurs and the conflict is ignited • Predisposing conditions --> initiating events --> engagement --> escalation --> negotiation • You can get around escalation but you must go through negotiation • Accommodation: the ability to remain constructive in the face of a lover’s temporary dis- regard --> this makes for happier relationships • Ending conflict • Separation: when one or both partners withdraw without solving the conflict. • This is not a good way to end • Domination: one partner gets his or her way when the other capitulates (one person totally gets their way) • Compromise: when both parties reduce their aspirations so that a mutually acceptable al- ternative can be reached • Integrative agreement: satisfy both partner’s original goals and aspirations, usually through...
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This note was uploaded on 12/01/2010 for the course PSYC 341 taught by Professor Cap during the Fall '08 term at Maryland.
- Fall '08