When you select avoidance, you approach a conflict by not managing it. You ignore or avoid talking about the conflict, or you communicate about it in indirect ways, by dropping hints, cracking jokes, or making sarcastic remarks. Avoidance is the most frequent approach to conflict (Sillars, 1980). People often use it because it seems easier and safer than directly engaging in disputes with others.
Although people opt for avoidance because it seems safe, it actually poses substantial risks (Afifi, McManus, Steuber, & Coho, 2009). First, routinely avoiding conflict can create cumulative annoyance, in which your repressed resentment grows as your mental list of complaints about other people builds up (Peterson, 2002). Eventually, cumulative annoyance overwhelms your ability to suppress it, and you explode. Imagine you’re working on a group project, but the other members reject every suggestion you make. You manage this by not saying anything; after all, you don’t want your group to think you’re difficult to work with. But your irritation intensifies. Then, when planning the group’s final presentation, you realize the perfect way to hook your audience’s attention. When you suggest it to the group, they shoot you down yet again. “THAT’S IT! I don’t care what you all do; I’ll handle my part by myself,” you scream. Such an angry outburst may destroy any possibility of working further with the group. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that people who use avoidance are less satisfied with their relationships than people who engage more directly in conflict (Caughlin & Golish, 2002).
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Charlie Brown has been the famously neurotic yet lovable character in the Charles Schulz comic strip, Peanuts, and more recently in The Peanuts Movie (2015). For decades, Charlie Brown’s anxiety and low self-
Second, avoidance raises the risk of pseudo-
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Despite the risks, avoidance can be a wise choice for managing conflict in situations in which emotions run high (Berscheid, 2002). If you and the other person involved are angry to the point where neither of you can control your emotions, you risk saying things that will permanently hurt the relationship if you continue the interaction. To prevent that unhappy outcome, it’s best to leave the room, hang up, or hold off on responding to texts or e-