Chapter 9 Review

• Conflict arises whenever people’s goals clash or they compete for valued resources.

• Avoid kitchen-sinking—hurling insults that have little to do with the original dispute.

• Conflict and power are closely related.

• Friendships are typically symmetrical relationships, whereas parent-child relationships are complementary relationships.

• Power is granted to you by others, depending on the power currency you possess. Types include resource, expertise, social network, personal, and intimacy.

• Across cultures and time, men have consolidated power over women by strategically depriving women of access to power currencies.

• Avoidance can lead to damaging behaviors, including skirting, sniping, cumulative annoyance, and the inability to overcome pseudo-conflict.

• Accommodation is often motivated by the desire to please the people we love.

• Competition involves the aggressive pursuit of one’s own goals at the expense of others’ goals.

• Reactivity occurs as a negative, explosive response to conflict.

• Collaboration is the best approach to conflict, since it reinforces trust in your relationships and builds relational satisfaction.

• If online conflicts arise, it’s best to take the encounter offline.

• In the short term, conflicts resolve through separation, domination, compromise, integrative agreements, or structural improvements.

• In the long term, partners consider the conflict’s impact on their relationship.

• Sudden-death statements occur when, in anger, people declare the end of the relationship.

• In close relationships, there is a risk of engaging in serial arguments, which may lead to demand-withdraw patterns.

• When people believe that no other option exists, they may commit acts of violence.

• Some conflicts are impossible to resolve.