How conflict expressions affect recipients’ conflict management behaviors

Abstract

We integrate theories of conflict expressions and conflict management to examine how the nature of a conflict expression (i.e., the level of entrenchment, subversiveness, ambiguity, and target-directness) influences receivers’ willingness to respond with competitive, integrative, and nonconfrontational behaviors. Specifically, we conducted two policy-capturing experiments through which we examined the effects of distinct facets of a conflict expression on receivers’ conflict management behaviors, while holding all other facets constant, thereby offering causal conclusions on the relative importance of each facet for predicting behavioral reactions. We find that receivers were more likely to respond with competitive (forcing) versus integrative (problem-solving, compromising) or nonconfrontational (yielding, avoiding) behaviors when conflict was expressed unambiguously with high entrenchment and subversiveness. Notably, entrenchment had the strongest influence of any facet on conflict reactions. Overall, we contribute to research by specifying behavioral outcomes of distinct conflict expressions, which likely have important implications for the initiation of conflict spirals.