Ch. 8: Managing Differences Flashcards
The Mystery of Conflict in Couples
Consider what everyone wants from their intimate relationships
consider what everyone knows about how we should treat our intimate partners
so how is it that we get into our worst, meanest, loudest, most hostile fights with the people we love the most?
The History of Studying Couple Conflict
- divorce in the 40s and 50s was low so it was thought the reason for divorce was something about THEM
- when divorce rates climbed in the 1960s, couples therapy became more acceptable (no longer thought that it was something about a disorder in the individuals anymore)
- the big complaint? conflict (interaction are aversive, they are punishing - we mold our partners)
- social learning theorists assumed that mismanaged conflict was a primary cause of relationship distress (clinicians as a driving force)
- they studied conflict and developed treatments based on this assumption
What IS Conflict?
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) - well-known social psychologist proposed that a definition of conflict begins with the recognition that participants in social interaction have goals These goals need not be conscious, they may be specific or general, and they may be short-term or long-term in nature "conflict arises when one person pursues his or her goals and in doing so interferes with the other person's goals....Responses this interference can vary in many ways."
so:
- in every intimate relationship, some conflict is inevitable - there are 2 people that want different things - “conflicts of interest”—are inevitable, and are particularly likely when the two people are highly interdependent and in frequent contact
- what matters is how we respond to conflict situations - this is where problems can arise - as intimate partners we have some control over how to respond when our partner interferes with our goals—and when our partner claims we are doing the same
- it is how couples disagree, more than whether they disagree or what they disagree about, that is most consequential for their relationship
- social learning theory focuses on this question - focus not on individual personalities and family backgrounds but on the unproductive ways partners talked about their differences of opinion
The Research Agenda: the cross-sectional question
what exactly is it that unhappy couples are doing wrong?
between couples - one couple acts like this and another couple acts like this - look at the differences between the two couples
The Research Agenda: the longitudinal question
what behaviors predict the future outcome of the relationship?
within couples - looking at what happens between the two people in a relationship over time
Methods: How to study conflict?
self-reports proved inadequate quickly
learning to observe couples was key
the typical observational conflict paradigm
self-reports proved inadequate quickly
not representing what’s actually happening, their memory and what’s actually happening could be very different, they aren’t reporting their faults - partners tend to blame one another
learning to observe couples was key
you can directly observe the couples
used to sit couples across from each other and couldn’t see how they were interacting or if they were making eye contact
now : sit couples at 90 degree angle so you can see how they are also interacting physically with one another, also place cameras in their homes to see them interacting a bit more naturally
the typical observational conflict paradigm
locate happy and unhappy couples
ask each spouse to identify a topic (something that actually needs to be resolved not something easily resolved)
record their discussion for a few minutes
compare observations of happy and unhappy couples
observational coding
deciding what to code
microanalytic vs global coding
behaviors as choices from a menu
getting reliability is hard
deciding what to code
affect vs verbal content
non-verbal behavior
sequences
affect vs verbal content
what they say vs how they say it
usually look at both
“shut up” can literally mean that or it could be an expression of excitement
non-verbal behavior
touching someone to provide support, making eye contact
sequences
when someone does this particular thing what does the other person do? what’s happening back and forth
microanalytic
take a small chunk and say “what were they like during that chunk” or what was said in that “speaking turn”
-if they interrupt, etc.
global coding
they just talked for 8-10 mins
-how negative or positive?
-what was their body language like in the whole segment?
much easier to get reliability - attributable to the couple and not the coder
behaviors as choices from a menu
list of codes
-coder codes specific behaviors from a list of behaviors
Partner says “I wish you would put your dishes in the dishwasher” and coder codes that as request or problem-solving
So what are unhappy couples doing wrong?
unhappy couples are more negative with each other than happy couples (no big surprise)
some subtleties (kinds of behaviors):
- kitchen-sinking
- self-summarizing
- presumptive attributions
- cross-complaining
- prescription
kitchen-sinking
unhappy couples: someone throws one complaint out there and then adds on more and more problems (everything but the kitchen sink)
-throw every problem in the relationship all at once
happy couples: focus on one problem at a time
self-summarizing
Unhappy couples: summarizing yourself/restating the problem no matter what your partner says
-they do it because they feel like they’re not being heard
happy couples: the partner would summarize what the other partner has said is a problem (not summarize themselves)
presumptive attributions
ie mindreading
unhappy couples: assuming you know why they did something
happy couples: ask the person (“why do you do that”)
cross-complaining
unhappy couples: responding to a complaint with another complaint
happy couples: acknowledge their concern/focus on the complaint
prescription
unhappy couples: telling your partner what to do (you need to get a job, you need to fix the kitchen sink)
happy couples: ask “what can I do to support you” “what can I do to help fix this?” - can still have an opinion but bring it in a different way
Negative Patterns and Sequences
unhappy couples are more rigid and predictable
cognitive editing (happy vs unhappy couples)
free advice: follow a neutral behavior with what kind of behavior?
unhappy couples are more rigid and predictable
- Negative reciprocity (if one person is negative the other partner is much more likely to respond negatively)
- unhappy couples take longer to exit negative exchanges
cognitive editing
happy wives, in particular, follow partner negatives with neutral behaviors
(Gottman 1979) happy spouses were assumed to engage in cognitive editing, whereby they would hear something negative but respond back in a neutral or even a positive way
negative behaviors in unhappy relationships would spark ever-escalating cycles of hostility
disagreements arise in our relationships not simply be-
cause of differing goals and agendas, as Lewin suggested, but because we and our partners are operating on the basis of remarkably different perceptions
and experiences of our relationships.
free advice: follow a neutral behavior with what kind of behavior?
don’t be the one to follow a neutral behavior with a negative behavior!!!
the best thing to do would be to show the soft disclosure rather than the hard disclosure if you neither can be positive, take a pause
Hard Disclosure
negativity and anger are the emotions that are being shown
Soft Disclosure
the secondary emotion (underlying emotion), something softer that is making the situation uncomfortable (anxiety, fear)
Escape conditioning
do we ever reinforce each other’s negative behaviors?
- it’s hard to make yourself vulnerable
- social learning theory: we reinforce our partner’s negative behaviors
a case study:
-the demand/withdraw pattern
demand withdraw pattern
social learning in action!
demand: a request
withdraw: putting it off
when this continues to happen, it escalates continuously until it finally gets to the point where you’re yelling about it and the other person gives in - this reinforces the nagging, escalated demand
The self-perpetuating quality in this pattern of interaction is obvious:
Partner A’s requests for change in the relationship might cause Partner B to become more defensive and disengaged, reactions that might, in turn, cause Partner A to become more demanding and insistent, thereby causing Partner B to pull back still further—or to dig in their heels and explode
In cases like this the couple is polarized, in the sense that they have adopted different viewpoints, or opposing positions, in the conflict they have created
-becomes apparent only when the women’s desires for change are under discussion, presumably because they
have more to gain from pursuing change, whereas men have more to gain by avoiding it
-this pattern will be more extreme in relationships where people want a lot of change—unhappy couples
Paradoxically, Partner A might be able to get more closeness by demanding less of it from Partner B, and Partner B might get more solace by not insisting on it so much (Frank and Debra example)
Predicting the Future of a couple
negative behaviors should predict negative outcomes, right? our behaviors should shape how we’re feeling
some weird results: (social learning assumption doesn’t pan out)
- Gottman & Krokoff (1989)
- Karney & Bradbury (1997)
Gottman & Krokoff (1989)
longitudinal study and found some couples had wives were communicating negatively, those couples were doing better over time
not finding what they thought they should find
their decline not as steep as other couples (not becoming unhappy as fast)
Karney & Bradbury (1997)
if you’re looking at couples that have been married for 20-30 years then most of the unhappy couples would have already divorced.
If you want to look at happy vs unhappy couples look at them right from the beginning.
they did this and they found the same thing!
couples with wives negativity were doing better over time
Problem with Gottman & Krokoff (1989) and Karney & Bradbury (1997) : Is it ever productive to get angry? do the results of these studies mean it’s good to get angry?
they just broke it down into positive and negative, they didn’t break it down to affect and content
Bradbury study: Content & Affect & Slopes
172 newlywed couples, first marriages
DV: slope, or rate of change in satisfaction over 4 years (satisfaction trajectory)
IV: Positive (light and fun) vs. negative affect (blaming and angry), Positive vs. negative content
Results:
low positive affect and high negative content have the steepest decline
high positive affect BUFFERS the high negative content (look the same as those in the low negative content)
low negative content: whether the affect is positive or negative doesn’t really matter
So, what predicts the future?
couples who are negative will experience faster declines in marital quality…
-but only when humor, interest, and affection are relatively rare
positive emotion can override the effects of negative content during conflict
what do humor, interest, and affection contribute to our conversations? what is the message? what is the impact of this message?
-conflicts are going to happen but by doing this you are showing that you care
Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Pertinent Facts
- 1 to 4 million women are assaulted by a male partner each year (not everyone agrees on what IPV is - there is ambiguity making it hard to get accurate counts; they are ashamed - they don’t want to report it because they don’t want to admit that they are willing to stay with a partner than hits them)
- in general, women are much less likely than men to be victims of crime. However, women are 5 to 8 times more likely to be victims of relationship violence (men can/are victims of relationship violence but the vast majority of time it is women who are the victims - perpetrated by men)
- Violence by an intimate partner accounts for 21% of all violence against women, but only 2% of violence against men (21% of the time the violence against women is not done by a stranger or a relative that you have a fight with - it is with the person who is supposed to love you the MOST; 98% of the time violence against men is by a stranger)
- According to the US Department of Justice, 33% of all murdered women are killed by an intimate partner (if you come across a murdered woman you have a 1 in 3 chance that it was the husband or boyfriend!!!)
Myth #1 (Intimate Partner Violence)
IPV is Rare
1960s and 1970s was when they finally started studying this - before then it was considered an unsuitable topics for studies; until recent decades, IPV was ignored as a rare extreme behavior
(it was generally thought that people who love each other wouldn’t hit each other or kill each other - that just doesn’t make any sense, unless you’re a psychopath! UNTIL Straus)
Straus et al. 1980
- random, representative sample of over 2100 adults (telephone survey)
- 12.1% of husbands admit to physical violence against spouse (if this is a representative sample, that is OVER 10% of the entire US)
- this has to be an underestimate (this is only those WILLING to admit it over the telephone - this means that even more people are engaging in this act of violence against their spouse)
if the phenomenon is this widespread then it has to be studied!
Myth #2 (Intimate Partner Violence)
IPV = Unhappy
some think that IPV is what happens after relationships get bad
newlywed data: 50% of newlyweds in our studies report some physical aggression
O’Leary et al. 1992 : high rates of violence in premarital (engaged) couples, who then went on to get married (found nearly 50% who said yes they engaged in physical violence and most still went on to get married)
-the presence of violence doesn’t allow you to predict which couples will go on to get married and which won’t
