Discord in relational models as a source of interpersonal conflict.
Item
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Title
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Discord in relational models as a source of interpersonal conflict.
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Identifier
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AAI9924838
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identifier
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9924838
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Creator
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Poulson, Barton Lynn.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Kay Deaux
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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Three experiments examined reactions to social conflicts involving A. P. Fiske's (1991, 1992) four Relational Models (RMs): Communal Sharing (CS), Authority Ranking (AR), Equality Matching (EM), and Market Pricing (MP). Because each relational model has a different logical structure, any operations and relations based on one RM may be unintelligible or incommensurable with another RM. Consequently, conflicts in which people use different RMs (i.e., between-model conflicts) were hypothesized to lead to more negative reactions than conflicts in which people use the same RM but otherwise disagree (i.e., within-model conflicts). This may be called the congruency hypothesis. Additionally, it was hypothesized that if the RMs are ordered (e.g., according to permissible logical operations or formality) then reactions would be stronger for greater discrepancies (i.e., the distance hypothesis). Finally, stronger reactions were predicted when partners use RMs that are more formal than expected compared to when less formal RMs are used (i.e., the direction hypothesis).;Study 1 provided a preliminary investigation of these hypotheses but results were uninformative due to substantial differences in the valence of the interaction outcome. Study 2 controlled for outcome differences and extended the range of behaviors described. The congruency and direction hypotheses were contradicted, whereas the distance hypothesis was partially supported (i.e., the largest discrepancies elicited more negative reactions than did the smaller discrepancies). In Study 3, the congruency and direction hypotheses were again contradicted, whereas no effect was found for distance. Moreover, both studies revealed special roles for conflicts involving CS and EM.;One possible reason for the general failure of the data to agree with the hypotheses may be the moderate valence of the conflicts used in these studies. In addition, the lack of clear cultural standards of acceptability of behavior may have contributed to the lack of support for the hypotheses. A third possibility is that the implications of the RMs and RM conflicts are different for positive interactions than for negative interactions. Further research is proposed to investigate each of these possibilities.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
