“If you hit me again,I'll hit you back:” Conflict management strategies of individuals experiencing aggression during conflicts

In interpersonal relationships characterized by aggression, the negotiation of conflict is especially significant. The present study examined the conflict management strategies used by 31 individuals who had experienced verbal and/or physical aggression during conflicts with their partners. Sillars’ (1986) conflict tactics coding system was used as a framework to analyze 960 pages of transcribed data. The results of this deductive content analysis indicated that the participants reported using primarily Distributive conflict strategies. Analytic induction was also used to interpret nonverbal forms of conflict management, revealing three common tactics: crying, nonverbal avoidance, and aggression. Implications for using these conflict strategies in interpersonal relationships characterized by aggression are discussed.     

Relational Maintenance and the Influence of Commitment in Online and Offline Relationships

The study of relational-maintenance behaviors has sometimes included the impact of medium as a peripheral variable, but rarely has the impact of medium been tested directly. Participants (N = 1336) delineated themselves into four separate groups depending on the initial and continued use of mediated communication. They reported their use of relational-maintenance behaviors, as well as feelings of commitment towards the relationship. The medium had an impact on the use of relational-maintenance behaviors, primarily between people who had only met their partners in a mediated environment and those who had met them face-to-face. However, commitment level appears to strongly moderate the relationship between group and use of maintenance behaviors.     

Playing With Dialectics: Black Female Friendship Groups as a Homeplace

Female friendships are significant to many Black females because they represent a homeplace, or a safe space. This study uses Baxter and Montgomery's (1996 Baxter , L. A. , & Montgomery , B. M. ( 1996 ). Relating: Dialogues and dialectics . New York , NY : The Guilford Press . [Google Scholar], 1998 Baxter , L. A. , & Montgomery , B. M. ( 1998 ). A guide to dialectical approaches to studying interpersonal relationships . In B. M. Montgomery & L. A. Baxter (Eds.), Dialectical approaches to studying interpersonal relationships (pp. 1 – 16 ). Mahwah , NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum . [Google Scholar]) relational dialectics theory and Collins’ (2000 Collins , P. H. ( 2000 ). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment ( ed.) , 2nd . New York , NY : Routledge . [Google Scholar]) Black feminist thought to understand the interplay of contradictions in the stories that Black females tell in their friendship groups. The contradictions embedded in the stories were finances (spending/saving), language (“good”/“bad” English), appearance (satisfaction/dissatisfaction), and race (acceptance/rejection of otherness). The interaction of these tensions showed that the friends engaged in group segregation and integration, which ultimately enabled them to freely express their culturally based truths without fear of marginalization.     

Formal features in children's science television: Sound effects,visual pace,and topic shifts

This study analyzes the auditory, visual, and information‐presentation pace of children's science television programs. These half‐hour programs averaged more than 19 sound effects per minute, 14 visual changes (cuts, wipes, and fades/dissolves) per minute, and more than 27 topic shifts per program. These results indicate that the current crop of programs presents content at a pace that may reduce their effectiveness.     

Relational Commitment and the Silent Treatment

When upset with a relational partner, intimates often enact the silent treatment, although it can harm their relationships. This study investigates the degree to which relational commitment predicts a person's self-reported use of the silent treatment. Undergraduate daters indicated their relational commitment, their use of the silent treatment when upset with their partner, and what they do if the partner asks if they are upset. Relational commitment was negatively related to using the silent treatment and stonewalling when the partner asked if there was a problem. Relational commitment was only positively related to admitting being upset when the partner asked if there was a problem. Study limitations and future research implications are discussed.     

Aggression in news comments: how context and article topic shape user-generated content

News editors listed online aggression as one of the main constraints to audience participation and debate in the media. However, previous studies offer contradictory evidence on how aggression affects the amount and civility of user participation. Furthermore, a large portion of these studies focus on the Anglo-Saxon context and follow an experimental design. This study addresses these issues through a content analysis of over 26,000 news comments from two Portuguese newspapers, testing how aggression in comments relates to the number of replies it generates and the aggressiveness of these replies. Results show that aggression generates more aggression in comment sections, but may also increase participation. The latter effect is moderated by the article topic, an important caveat that may explain different outcomes in previous works. The practical implications of these findings and paths for future research are discussed.     

Links between Conflict Management Research and Practice

This paper explicates the implications of my research on conflict management for self improvement and for practitioners who work to improve the conflict management of others. I also note how my experiences with practitioners have informed my research.     

Discursive Struggles in Families Formed through Visible Adoption: An Exploration of Dialectical Unity

This study is the first to provide best practices exclusively for communication about crises that involve issues of culture, ethnicity, and/or race from expert crisis managers' perspectives. Using complexity theory as a framework, this study provides an in-depth, theoretically grounded understanding of managing issues and crises involving culture, ethnicity and/or race through the experiences of 34 senior crisis communicators. Complex insider perspectives suggest that responsibility for crisis management must move beyond any managerial bias to become more organic, normative, inclusive, and community spirited. First, issues and crises involving culture, ethnicity, and/or race are defined, laying a foundation for future theory development on ways these issues can become or exacerbate crises. Second, research participants’ stories coalesce to produce best practices and a useful decision-making framework for practical application in organizations.     

Functions of aggressive behavior and future functional impairment

The present study investigated relations between proactive and reactive functions of physical and relational aggression and functional impairment across early childhood. It was hypothesized that reactive functions of aggression would be associated with functional impairment. Hypotheses with regard to proactive functions of aggression were exploratory. Participants were 36 children (22 girls) from a longitudinal study. At Time 1 (M = 50.31 months old, SD = 10.97), observations of aggressive behavior were collected during preschool free-play. At Time 2 (M = 73.33 months old, SD = 10.88), parent-report of functional impairment was collected. Reactive physical aggression was a significant and unique predictor of future impairment when controlling for gender and all other types of aggression. Implications of these findings are discussed from a developmental perspective.     

Classroom justice: Perceptions of fairness as a predictor of student motivation,learning, and aggression

The present study examined the relationship between students’ perceptions of distributive and procedural justice in a college course and student motivation concerning the course, affective learning in the course, and aggression toward the course instructor. Although student perceptions of both distributive and procedural justice were positively correlated with student motivation and affective learning and negatively correlated with student aggression toward the course instructor, multiple regression analyses indicated that only perceptions of procedural justice predicted the three criterion variables at a statistically significant level while distributive justice perceptions did not. Implications and suggestions for future research in classroom justice are offered.