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Chapter 8
Managing Conflict
CHAPTER OUTCOMES
• Explore what conflict is and how it unfolds as a process
• Learn which approaches to managing conflict are least—and most—competent
CHAPTER OUTLINE
DEFINING CONFLICT
How do the conflicts in your life happen? Are they “out of nowhere” blowups? Do they contain
heated language? Do you avoid them at all costs? No matter the type, all conflicts are a process
involving people who perceive incompatible goals or actions. Knowing what conflicts are
empowers you to recognize them when they exist and manage them more constructively.
CONFLICT BEGINS WITH PERCEPTION
• Conflict begins when people perceive incompatible goals or actions. The perceptual errors
and biases we discussed in Chapter 2 play an active role in shaping how conflicts unfold.
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○ During conflicts, you’re more likely to place blame on others than on yourself, perceive
others as uncooperative and yourself as helpful, and believe you’re acting reasonably and
CONFLICT INVOLVES CLASHES BETWEEN GOALS OR ACTIONS
• Clashes between people’s goals or actions are at the heart of conflict, ranging from
disagreements between group members to arguments between romantic partners regarding
CONFLICT IS A PROCESS
• Conflicts often seem like they’re single, isolated events, such as a comment or text message;
but conflicts are never just one event. They are a communication process that unfolds over
time.
○ Most conflicts proceed through several stages, each involving decisions and actions that
SELECTING AN APPROACH TO CONFLICT
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When conflict erupts, you make choices about how to deal with it. You may avoid the issue,
accommodate the wishes of others, compete to get what you want, or collaborate to solve the
problem. All of these choices have consequences—whether the conflicts endure, escalate, or
AVOIDANCE
• Avoidance occurs when you approach conflict by not managing it. You ignore or avoid
talking about the conflict, or you communicate about it in indirect ways by dropping hints,
cracking jokes, or making sarcastic remarks. Avoidance is the most frequent approach to
conflict.
• This seems easier and safer than directly engaging in disputes with others, but it actually
poses substantial risks that include the following:
○ Cumulative annoyance occurs when you routinely avoid conflicts and create repressed
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○ It may be best to leave the room, hang up, or hold off on responding to texts or emails
ACCOMMODATION
• Accommodation manages conflict by abandoning your own goals or actions and giving in
to others’ desires; it may result in positive or negative outcomes, depending on the situation
and your relationship with the others involved.
○ Accommodating close relational partners is a hallmark of healthy relationships; and
• Power is the ability to influence or control important resources, people, and events.
Powerful people can choose whether they wish to accommodate others or not, without fear
of reprisal. People without power must accommodate those with power, or suffer harmful
consequences. Five different types of power include
○ Resource power is derived from material things such as money, property, and food. Most
bosses have resource power over employees because they control workers’ employment
and compensation.
○ Expertise power is based on special skills or knowledge. People with specialized degrees
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connections has power if they can help others get access to jobs, schools, material
goods, and so on.
○ Personal power is based on desirable personal characteristics such as beauty, intelligence,
charisma, communication skills, or sense of humor. “Social butterflies” or other charming
COMPETITION
• Competition involves confronting others and pursuing your own goals to the exclusion of
theirs; it has two defining characteristics: open and clear discussion of the conflict and
pursuit of one’s own goals without regard for others’. Whether you’ll choose competition
depends on your power in the situation and relationship. If you have power, you’ll be more
likely to use competition than if you don’t.
• Escalation is a dramatic rise in emotional intensity and unproductive communication; it can
develop if the competitive approach is used. If you and the others involved in the conflict
refuse to back down from the dispute, the conflict becomes “a test of wills,” virtually
guaranteeing that tensions will escalate.
○ Kitchen sinking is when conflicts that start out as minor quickly explode into major
disputes in which combatants hurl assorted accusations at each other that have little to do
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COLLABORATION
• Collaboration, the most constructive approach for conflict management, involves treating
conflict as a mutual problem-solving challenge and often results in compromise, in which
everyone involved modifies their individual goals to come up with a solution to the conflict.
○ You’re most likely to use collaboration when you respect the other people involved and
are concerned about their desires as well as your own.
○ It works best face-to-face and makes it more likely that the people involved will seek
constructive solutions and consider everyone’s goals and desires. If this isn’t an option,
arrange a phone call instead.
○ To manage conflict through collaboration, try these four suggestions:
a. Attack problems, not people. Keep your language courteous, respectful, and positive—
avoiding personal attacks. Treat the source of the conflict as separate from the people
who are involved using “I” and “we” language to emphasize this, and avoiding “you”
language that can place blame on others.
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solution. Don’t get bogged down searching for the one “perfect” solution—it may not
exist.
d. Critically evaluate your solution. Carefully consider this question: is it equally fair for
CONFLICT ENDINGS
When you’re in the middle of a conflict, it seems to last forever. But conflicts do end. The
approach you choose for dealing with conflict affects not only your future communication with
those involved but also the speed with which your conflict will conclude and the type of ending
that will occur.
Most conflicts reach some sort of conclusion, and the approach used to manage a conflict
directly determines how it will end. Most conflicts end in one of five ways: separation,
domination, compromise, integrative agreements, or structural improvements.
SEPARATION
• Separation occurs when one or more of the people involved terminate communication; it
can take many forms.
○ It can be physical, technological, or communicative.
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DOMINATION
• Domination is when one person or group gets others to abandon their own goals and instead
do what the person or group wants them to do.
○ These often are called win–lose solutions because the people who get their way “win,”
while the others who accommodate them “lose.”
○ The strongest predictor of domination is the power balance between the people involved.
In cases in which one person or group has substantial power, and they opt to use
COMPROMISE
• Conflicts end in compromise when the parties involved change their goals and actions to
make them compatible.
○ This typically results from the collaborative approach and is most effective in situations
INTEGRATIVE AGREEMENTS
• Integrative agreements are forged when people generate creative solutions that enable all
sides to keep and reach their original goals.
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○ Such agreements commonly are called win–win solutions, and people can arrive at them
STRUCTURAL IMPROVEMENTS
• Structural improvements occur when both parties change their relationship rules to
prevent further disputes, and the conflict itself becomes a vehicle for reshaping relationships
BARRIERS TO CONSTRUCTIVE CONFLICT
It’s not easy to resolve conflicts. There are powerful barriers that get in the way, and they are
often ones you create: blaming others but not yourself, using words as weapons, and failing to
recognize cultural differences. Overcoming such challenges is essential for improving your
conflict management skills.
• Three of the toughest barriers are attributional errors, destructive messages, and cultural
differences.
ATTRIBUTIONAL ERRORS
• Attributional errors are the explanations you create for why things are happening the way
they are. When conflicts erupt, you don’t judge yourself, others, or the situation objectively
but instead perceive these things subjectively, in ways that paint yourself in a positive light
and make others look bad.
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○ It is easy to blame other people for causing conflict and to consider ourselves faultless;
this one-sided blaming is an attributional error because most conflicts are not caused by
only one person.
○ To improve your conflict-management skills, practice analyzing the attributions you’re
making during disputes and adjusting them to compensate for any potential errors. Get
into the habit of asking yourself three questions:
a. Is my partner really being uncooperative, or am I just imagining it?
b. Is my partner really the only one to blame, or have I also done something to cause the
conflict?
c. Is this conflict really due to ongoing differences between us, or is it due to temporary
factors such as stress or fatigue?
DESTRUCTIVE MESSAGES
• Destructive messages are when you perceive others as uncooperative and you blame them
for conflicts; you may say things that make others feel bad, escalate conflicts further, and
damage the relationship. Three common types of destructive messages that occur during
conflict are as follows:
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○ Sudden-death statements occur when conflicts spiral out of control and declarations are
made that the relationship is over, even though the people involved did not consider
termination a possibility before the conflict. People can “walk it back” after issuing
sudden-death statements, but this is hard to do without looking foolish and impulsive,
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
• Cultural differences also affect conflict and must be competently managed. People from
individualistic and collectivistic cultures perceive and approach conflicts in radically
different ways.
○ People raised in collectivistic cultures often view direct discussion of the causes behind a
conflict as personal attacks and see such discussion as disruptive to the “harmony” of
encounters; they tend to approach conflict through avoidance or accommodation.