When disagreement gets ugly: perceptions of bias and the escalation of conflict

It is almost a truism that disagreement produces conflict. This article suggests that perceptions of bias can drive this relationship. First, these studies show that people perceive those who disagree with them as biased. Second, they show that the conflict-escalating approaches that people take toward those who disagree with them are mediated by people's tendency to perceive those who disagree with them as biased. Third, these studies manipulate the mediator and show that experimental manipulations that prompt people to perceive adversaries as biased lead them to respond more conflictually-and that such responding causes those who engage in it to be viewed as more biased and less worthy of cooperative gestures. In summary, this article provides evidence for a "bias-perception conflict spiral," whereby people who disagree perceive each other as biased, and those perceptions in turn lead them to take conflict-escalating actions against each other (which in turn engender further perceptions of bias, continuing the spiral).     

The communication of emotion during conflict in married couples

This study investigated emotion during interpersonal conflicts between mates. It addressed questions about how clearly couples express emotion (encoding), how accurately they recognize each other's emotion (decoding), and how well they distinguish between types of negative emotion. It was theorized that couples express and perceive both: (a) event-specific emotions, which are unique to particular people on particular occasions, and (b) contextual-couple emotions, which reflect the additive effect of emotions across different events and across both partners. Eighty-three married couples engaged in a series of two conflict conversations. Self-report ratings, observer ratings, and partner ratings were used to assess two types of negative emotion: hard emotion (e.g., angry or annoyed) and soft emotion (e.g., sad or hurt). Couples were reasonably accurate in encoding, decoding, and in distinguishing between types of emotion. Emotion expression was strongly associated with general levels of contextual-couple emotion summed across two conversations, whereas emotion perception was more closely tied to specific events. Hard emotion was readily perceived when it was overtly expressed, and soft emotion could sometimes be recognized even when it was not expressed clearly.     

"When it's just me at home, it hits me that I'm completely alone": an online survey of adolescents in self-care

The present study examined adolescents' experiences of loneliness and solitude in their responses to an online survey on self-care. Both quantitative (n = 272) and qualitative (n = 150) responses were coded for these feelings when home alone. Results indicate that adolescents experience the duality of aloneness, including both positive solitude and negative loneliness. Adolescents' responses range from embraced solitude and self-care to feelings of loneliness and rejection of time by themselves. Adolescents reporting loneliness were significantly less likely to enjoy being home alone during the day and at night (p < or = .001). Also, gender, age, and emotions such as fear, boredom, and separation anxiety are associated with loneliness among adolescents in self-care. Interventions to increase connectedness and combat loneliness during out-of-school hours are recommended.     

The real me: Authenticity,interpersonal goals,and conflict tactics

Dispositional authenticity is associated with positive intra- and interpersonal outcomes, yet how authenticity relates to conflict solving strategies has not been examined. The present study aims to explore the relationship between authenticity and conflict solving strategies in close friendships and proposes that interpersonal goals (i.e., compassionate goals and self-image goals) might mediate the relationship. Three hundred sixty-three Taiwanese college students completed a survey package. Results showed that authenticity was positively associated with strategies that promote the needs of both oneself and one's friend (i.e., integrating and compromising) while negatively, or not, associated with those that don't concern one's own needs (i.e., obliging) or one's friend's needs (i.e., dominating and avoiding). Further, compassionate goals mediated the relationship between authenticity and integrating, compromising, and dominating strategies, while suppressing the relationship between authenticity and avoiding and obliging strategies. Self-image goals mediated only dominating and avoiding strategies.     

Don't leave me: the effect of dependency and emotions in relationship conflict

Two studies examined how the effect of dependency and emotions on the dynamics of relationship conflict differs between men and women. In Study 1, 96 women and 67 men were presented with conflict situations that might occur in their relationship; the probability of aggression, anger, and dependency was measured. Results showed that anger mediated the relationship between dependency and the intention to use aggression, in men, but not in women. In Study 2, 95 women and 65 men wrote about a conflict situation that they had experienced with their partner; loyalty, guilt, and dependency were measured. Results showed that dependency predicted loyalty among women, and that this effect was mediated by guilt.     

Conversation analysis at work: detection of conflict in competitive discussions through semi-automatic turn-organization analysis

This study proposes a semi-automatic approach aimed at detecting conflict in conversations. The approach is based on statistical techniques capable of identifying turn-organization regularities associated with conflict. The only manual step of the process is the segmentation of the conversations into turns (time intervals during which only one person talks) and overlapping speech segments (time intervals during which several persons talk at the same time). The rest of the process takes place automatically and the results show that conflictual exchanges can be detected with Precision and Recall around 70% (the experiments have been performed over 6 h of political debates). The approach brings two main benefits: the first is the possibility of analyzing potentially large amounts of conversational data with a limited effort, the second is that the model parameters provide indications on what turn-regularities are most likely to account for the presence of conflict.     

Conversation analysis at work: detection of conflict in competitive discussions through semi-automatic turn-organization analysis

This study proposes a semi-automatic approach aimed at detecting conflict in conversations. The approach is based on statistical techniques capable of identifying turn-organization regularities associated with conflict. The only manual step of the process is the segmentation of the conversations into turns (time intervals during which only one person talks) and overlapping speech segments (time intervals during which several persons talk at the same time). The rest of the process takes place automatically and the results show that conflictual exchanges can be detected with Precision and Recall around 70% (the experiments have been performed over 6 h of political debates). The approach brings two main benefits: the first is the possibility of analyzing potentially large amounts of conversational data with a limited effort, the second is that the model parameters provide indications on what turn-regularities are most likely to account for the presence of conflict.     

Hard and soft emotion during conflict: Investigating married couples and other relationships

Three studies investigated the function of 2 types of negative emotion during interpersonal conflict. Hard emotion includes feeling angry or aggravated. Soft emotion includes feeling sad or hurt. In both Study 1 (including 236 married people) and Study 2 (including 140 college students), participants recalled 3 different previous conflict episodes. In the third study, 77 married couples were observed in 4 different conflict conversations, completed during 2 assessment sessions. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to investigate the extent to which change in emotion predicted corresponding change in behavior and appraisal. Hard emotion predicted increases in negative communication, whereas soft emotion predicted more benign forms of communication. Soft emotion also predicted increases in appraisals that interpersonal conflicts are important to resolve.     

最有趣的是“她”在传教——老舍《柳屯的》梗概

20世纪50年代读《老舍短篇小说选》,印象比较深的是“月牙儿”,依稀记得“黑白李”和“断魂枪”。近日又读这部书,却对其中《柳屯的》一篇发生了兴趣。夏家在村里是数一数二的,他们有三百来亩地。夏老者和他的儿子夏廉都信教,对村里的公益事业是一毛不拔, “我们信教,不开发这个”。村里人对他家彼此敬而远之,夏家的财产越来越多。很有几个人,因为看夏家这样一帆风顺,也信了     

The flow of emotion through Beowulf

The Old English saga Beowulf was studied in translation with the help of the Dictionary of Affect in Language which quantifies the emotional connotations of words. Statistically significant differences in Pleasantness and Activation were evident across segments of the poem. A model was developed to represent the wave-like flow of Pleasantness and Activation through the Beowulf saga. Analyses identified a meta-structure whose climax was the second adventure (the killing of Grendel's mother). Data from three different translations and data representing the meter and orthography of the original poem provided convergent construct validity for the model.     

Coping through emotional approach: a new look at emotion, coping, and health-related outcomes

Researchers studying stress and coping processes have attempted to identify which coping strategies are most adaptive in stressful encounters. A generally accepted conclusion has been that emotion-focused coping processes are associated with dysfunctional outcomes. Studies from our and other research teams challenge the "bad reputation" of emotion-focused coping by demonstrating that items measuring emotion-focused strategies in published coping questionnaires are confounded with distress and self-deprecation. We have developed and validated new instruments to assess coping though acknowledging, understanding, and expressing emotion, that is, coping through emotional approach. Longitudinal and experimental studies using these new scales have documented the adaptive potential of emotional-approach coping in the context of several types of stressors, including infertility, breast cancer, and chronic pain. However, characteristics of the environmental context, stressful experience, and individual are important moderators of the relations of emotional-approach coping and health-related outcomes. Potential mediators and moderators of coping through emotional approach, clinical relevance of the construct, and directions for research are discussed.     

Nonverbal "accents": cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion

We report evidence for nonverbal "accents," subtle differences in the appearance of facial expressions of emotion across cultures. Participants viewed photographs of Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans in which posers' muscle movements were standardized to eliminate differences in expressions, cultural or otherwise. Participants guessed the nationality of posers displaying emotional expressions at above-chance levels, and with greater accuracy than they judged the nationality of the same posers displaying neutral expressions. These findings indicate that facial expressions of emotion can contain nonverbal accents that identify the expresser's nationality or culture. Cultural differences are intensified during the act of expressing emotion, rather than residing only in facial features or other static elements of appearance. This evidence suggests that extreme positions regarding the universality of emotional expressions are incomplete.     

"He loves me, he loves me not . . . ": uncertainty can increase romantic attraction

This research qualifies a social psychological truism: that people like others who like them (the reciprocity principle). College women viewed the Facebook profiles of four male students who had previously seen their profiles. They were told that the men (a) liked them a lot, (b) liked them only an average amount, or (c) liked them either a lot or an average amount (uncertain condition). Comparison of the first two conditions yielded results consistent with the reciprocity principle. Participants were more attracted to men who liked them a lot than to men who liked them an average amount. Results for the uncertain condition, however, were consistent with research on the pleasures of uncertainty. Participants in the uncertain condition were most attracted to the men-even more attracted than were participants who were told that the men liked them a lot. Uncertain participants reported thinking about the men the most, and this increased their attraction toward the men.     

Adolescents' emotion attributions and expectations of behavior in situations involving moral conflict

This study examined the idea that expectations of behavior in hypothetical situations involving potential moral transgressions are related to emotion attributions relating to both moral and cost-benefit considerations. We asked younger (14 years 5 months) and older (16 years 1 month) female and male adolescents (a) to make predictions about the probability that an adolescent placed in a hypothetical situation where a payoff could be obtained by acting in a nonmoral way would choose to do so and (b) to evaluate adolescents' attributions of moral (guilt) and cost-benefit-related emotions (satisfaction and fear) to the nonmoral action. Two different situations were examined; one looked at the possibility of stealing money from a lost wallet, and the other examined a situation where a contract with another peer could be broken for personal reasons. Results showed that expectations that the nonmoral action would be taken were positively related to the degree of satisfaction and negatively related to the degree of guilt and fear. However, the pattern of relations between emotion attributions and behavioral expectations differed between the two situations. Female and male adolescents had different levels of emotion attributions and behavioral expectations, but the relation between the two was similar for both. Finally, developmental comparisons indicated that older adolescents put more weight on guilt and were more internally consistent in the way that emotions were integrated into behavioral expectations.     

Parental conflict resolution styles and children's adjustment: children's appraisals and emotion regulation as mediators

Guided by the emotional security hypothesis and the cognitive-contextual framework, the authors investigated whether the associations between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children's internalizing and externalizing problems were mediated by children's appraisals of threat and self-blame and their emotion regulation. Participants were 192 Swiss 2-parent families with children aged 9-12 years (M age = 10.62 years, SD = 0.41 years). Structural equation modeling was used to test the empirical validity of the theoretical model. Results indicated that children's maladaptive emotion regulation mediated the association between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children's internalizing as well as externalizing problems. Whereas perceived threat was related only to children's internalizing problems, self-blame did not mediate the links between negative parental conflict resolution styles and children's adjustment. Implications for understanding the mechanisms by which exposure to interparental conflict could lead to children's maladjustment and limitations of the study are discussed.     

"Just looking at food makes me gain weight": experimental induction of thought-shape fusion in eating-disordered and non-eating-disordered women

Thought-shape fusion (TSF) is a cognitive distortion that can be induced experimentally and is associated with eating pathology. The current study was conducted in order to elucidate the effects of TSF induction in females with eating disorders (n=35), as well as in restrained eaters (n=38) and unrestrained eaters (n=39). It was hypothesized that TSF induction would result in anxiety, guilt, increased feelings of fatness, perceived weight gain and feelings of moral wrong-doing relative to an anxiety and control induction. It was further hypothesized that restrained eaters and individuals with eating disorders would exhibit a stronger reaction to a TSF induction than would unrestrained eaters. The results indicated that, as predicted, TSF can be induced in individuals both with and without eating disorders, and individuals with eating disorders reported the highest levels of "state" TSF after the induction relative to the non-clinical controls. However, contrary to expectations, restrained eaters reported higher levels of perceived weight gain and moral wrong-doing after the anxiety induction (but not the TSF induction) relative to the control induction. Potential mechanisms for this pattern of results are discussed, and the clinical implications of research on TSF are also considered.     

Infants' understanding of the link between visual perception and emotion: "If she can't see me doing it, she won't get angry."

Two experiments investigated 18-month-olds' understanding of the link between visual perception and emotion. Infants watched an adult perform actions on objects. An emoter then expressed neutral affect or anger toward the adult in response to the adult's actions. Subsequently, infants were given 20 s to interact with each object. In Experiment 1, the emoter faced infants with a neutral expression during each 20-s response period but looked at either a magazine or the infant. In Experiment 2, the emoter faced infants with a neutral expression, and her eyes were either open or closed. When the emoter visually monitored infants' actions, the infants regulated their object-directed behavior on the basis of their memory of the emoter's affect. However, if the previously angry emoter read a magazine (Experiment 1) or closed her eyes (Experiment 2), infants were not governed by her prior emotion. Infants behaved as if they expected the emoter to get angry only if she could see them performing the actions. These findings suggest that infants appreciate how people's visual experiences influence their emotions and use this information to regulate their own behavior.