Styles and Tactics

Question 1

Define styles.

Answer 1

Style preferences develop over a person’s lifetime. Conflict styles are patterned responses, or clusters of behavior, that people use in conflict.

Question 2

Distinguish styles from tactics.

Answer 2

Tactics are an individual move people make to carry out their general approach. Styles describe the big picture, whereas tactics describe the specific communication moves of the big picture.

Question 3

Reproduce the graph showing styles varying in assertiveness and cooperativeness.

Answer 3

On paper….

Question 4

Define avoidance.

Answer 4

Avoidance as a basic choice: Maintenance-by-suppression. Avoidance as a style: Characterized by denial of the conflict, changing and avoiding topics, being noncommittal, and joking rather than dealing with the conflict at hand. It is still a mode of conflict expression.

Question 5

Give an example of the avoid/criticize loop.

Answer 5

In the avoid/criticize loop, you avoid bringing up an issue to people directly but spend a lot of time talking about them to others.

Question 6

How does avoidance function differently in diverse cultures?

Answer 6

In collectivist cultures, if you avoid a conflict, others will talk to you about how to heal wounds, make amends, and solve the conflict in indirect ways. Avoidance represents “indirect working through,” but in individualistic cultures, avoidance represents “indirect escalation.”

Question 7

Give examples of avoidance tactics.

Answer 7

1) Denial and equivocation, 2) topic management, 3) Noncommittal remarks, 4) Irreverent remarks (joking)

Question 8

What are the advantages and disadvantages of competitive tactics?

Answer 8

Advantages: Competition can be be useful when one has to make quick, decisive action. Competition can generate creative ideas. It is useful if the goal is more important than the relationship.

Disadvantages: Competition can be harmful if one party is unable or unwilling to deal with conflict head-on. It can encourage one party to go underground and use covert means to make the other pay. It limits the outcomes to winning and losing.

Question 9

Define threats and give examples of them.

Answer 9

A negative sanction in which the source of the threat controls the outcome.

Question 10

Distinguish between threats, warnings, promises and recommendations.

Answer 10

Each is different depending on if it’s negative or positive, controlled outcome or uncontrolled.

Question 11

What is verbal aggressiveness?

Answer 11

A form of communicative violence. Broader than threats, verbal aggression is used to attack self-concepts of other people.

Question 12

Give examples of abusive talk.

Answer 12

Vague language, opposition, relational talk, despair, interfering with interdependence, complaints, ineffective change.

Question 13

What is bullying and what effects does it have?

Answer 13

Bullying is ongoing, persistent badgering, harassment and psychological terrorizing . . . that demoralizes and isolates those targeted.

Question 14

Give examples of types of violence.

Answer 14

Violence consists of any verbal or physical strategy that attempts to convince, control, or compel others to your point of view.
Controlling, labeling, and attacking.

Question 15

What different explanations are there for the incidence of violence?

Answer 15

1- Violent responses to conflict are learned.
2- A patriarchal culture insists the man is always right.
3- Violence is a lack of communication skills in a situation of powerlessness.

Question 16

Define compromise, listing its advantages and disadvantages.

Answer 16

Compromise is an intermediate style resulting in some gains and some losses for each party.
Advantages: Accomplishing important goals in less time. Appears reasonable to most parties.
Disadvantages: True compromise requires each side giving something in order to get an agreement.

Question 17

How does accommodation differ from avoidance?

Answer 17

One who practices accommodation does not assert individual needs and prefers a cooperative and harmonizing approach.

Question 18

What are the advantages and disadvantages of accommodation?

Answer 18

Advantages: Accommodation can prevent harm, allow maintenance of the relationship, and keep unimportant issues from disrupting the relationship.
Disadvantages: Accommodation can lead to competitive niceness. It can keep relational commitment from being tested. It can signal lack of interest.

Question 19

Clarify collaboration and specify its advantages and disadvantages.

Answer 19

Collaboration demands constructive engagement. It is an “invitational rhetoric” that invites the other’s perspective. Exploratory problem solving.
Advantages: Finds integrative solution. Affirms the importance of the relationship.
Disadvantages: Takes time and energy and may not be worth it. The more powerful (RICE) person can be manipulative.

Question 20

What are some cautions we should keep in mind when discussing styles?

Answer 20

Studies are based on perception. People see themselves as solving the problem and others as interfering by using controlling or aggressive styles. People value their own approaches to life. People may work through a process of styles.

Question 21

Specify how styles are linked in interaction sequences.

Answer 21

Styles can be linked by (1) complementary patterns (e.g. engage/avoid) and (2) symmetrical patterns (avoid/avoid).

Question 22

Discuss the gender differences and effects in violent communication.

Answer 22

Women and children are more likely to be injured in violent communication. Men are more likely to report violence, but less likely to acknowledge it in a relationship. Most violent acts are by men.

Question 23

What do you gain by having a flexible set of styles?

Answer 23

You are more likely to accomplish private and group goals.

Question 24

How can you tell if you are stuck in a style?

Answer 24

Your current response feels like the only natural one. Your conflicts have similar characteristics even in different contexts. You have a set of patterned responses. People respond to you in similar ways. You carry a label.

Question 25

Describe rhetorically sensitive people.

Answer 25

People who change their communication style based on the demands of different situations. They are (1) comfortable altering their roles, (2) avoid stylizing their communication behavior, (3) develop skills to withstand pressure and ambiguity of adaption, (4) they are purposive rather than expressive, (5) they adapt in a rational and orderly way.

Question 26

Give examples of the controlling form of violence.

Answer 26

Cutting others off, lying or overstating, speaking in absolutes, changing subjects or using hostile, directive questions to control the conversation.

Question 27

Give examples of the labeling form of violence.

Answer 27

Putting a name on people or ideas so we can dismiss them under a general stereotype. It is related to contempt and ridicule.

Question 28

Give examples of the attacking form of violence.

Answer 28

A person moves from winning the argument to making the person suffer. Attacking is never good and furthers the cycle of violence.