Managing Conflict in Interpersonal Relationships Ch 8
Understanding Interpersonal Conflict
Conflict: An expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce rewards, and interference from the other party in achieving their goals.
Communication Climates in Interpersonal Relationships
Communication Climate: The emotional tone of a relationship as it is expressed in the messages that the partners send and receive.
Confirming Messages: Actions and words that express respect and show that we value the other person.
Disconfirming Messages: Words and actions that express a lack of caring or respect for another person.
Criticism: A messages that is personal, all-encompassing, and accusatory.
Contempt: Verbal and nonverbal messages that ridicule or belittle the other person.
Defensiveness: protecting oneself by counterattacking the other person.
Stonewalling: Refusing to engage with the other person.
Relational Spiral: A reciprocal communication pattern in which each person's message reinforces the other's.
Escalatory spiral: A reciprocal pattern of communication in which messages, either confirming or disconfirming, between two or more communicators reinforce one another.
Avoidance Spiral: A communication spiral in which the parties slowly reduce their dependence on one another, withdraw, and become less invested in the relationship.
Cultural Idiom
What goes around comes around: Expect to be treated the way you have treated others.
Hold on: Wait
Approaches to Conflict
Nonassertion: The inability or unwillingness to express one's thoughts or feelings.
Indirect Communication: Hinting at a message instead of expressing thoughts and feelings directly.
Cultural Idiom
Face the problem head-on: Confront directly
Test the waters: Try before committing
Softening the blow: Easing the effect
Punch: Force or effectiveness
In the short run: For a short period of time
Passive Aggression: An indirect expression of aggression, delivered in a way that allows the sender to maintain a façade of kindness.
Direct Aggression: A message that attacks the position and perhaps the dignity to the receiver.
Assertive Communication: A style of communicating that directly expresses the sender's needs, thoughts, or feelings, delivered in a way that does not attack the receiver.
Touchy: Easily offended
In the long run: Over an extended period of time
On the other hand: From the opposite point of view
Managing Interpersonal Conflicts
Win-Lose Problem Solving: An approach to conflict resolution in which one party reaches his or her goal at the expense of the other.
Lose-Lose Problem Solving: An approach to conflict resolution in which neither party achieves its goals.
Compromise: An approach to conflict resolution in which both parties attain at least part of what they seek by giving something up.
Cultural Idiom
Two to tango: Both parties affect the outcome
Win-Win Problem Solving: An approach to conflict resolution in which the parties work together to satisfy all their goals.
Second Nature: Easy and natural
Rolling in money: Extremely wealthy
Frame of mind: Mental state
Keep on top of: Stay in control
In my life I have been handed more than enough a win-lose problem, when it came to certain situations in a interpersonal relation. Mostly in it took place either at home or in high school for me in my experience.
To me conflict is an important part of a interpersonal relation with anyone for that matter as it allows both people in most cases to grow and perhaps better understand one another.
In my experience in any kind of interpersonal relationship, communication climate is vital in order to better understand how the other person feels though the way they communicate back to you.
In my life I have experienced a lot of passive aggression in terms of what comes out of a conflict that I am in. Due to any kind of reasons that caused a conflict between me and someone that I have a interpersonal relationship with.
Question 1 Answer: I was surprised by how many terms there are for communication climate in a interpersonal relationships. That's really interesting in my opinion, as I though there would only be a few.
Question 2 Answer: What bothered me was that to me I thought there would be more example to how one should be able to mange interpersonal conflicts.
Question 3 Answer: What confused me was that I wish in the section where approaches to conflict would have used certain situations to solidify those terms because sometimes some people might have difficulty to understand these approaches if used incorrectly.