Alan L. Sillars

Attributions and communication in roommate conflicts

This paper develops a theoretical approach to communication in interpersonal conflict which emphasizes the role of attributional processes. According to this view, communicative decisions in conflict are largely a function of social attributions about the intent, causality, and stability of behaviors in conflict. Factors which bias attributions along these dimensions encourage noncooperative conflict stategies. Predictions from this perspective were examined in a field study of college dormitory roommates. Open‐ended descriptions of conflicts experienced by roommates were used to formulate a typology of conflict resolution strategies. The main categories in this typology (“passive‐indirect,” “distributive,” and “integrative”) vary in the extent to which they promote information exchange and are oriented toward individual versus mutual goals. Associations between the conflict strategies reported by subjects, their attributions for conflicts, and conflict outcomes were in the expected direction.

Interpersonal Perception in Relationships

As the eclectic nature of this volume testifies, compatibility in relationships has been approached from a variety of perspectives. However, integrative efforts are rare and it is difficult to keep track of authors who run in different academic circles. Consequently, there are many pockets of research that have developed independently, although they speak to similar issues.

Cognition During Marital Conflict: The Relationship of Thought and Talk

This article describes and analyzes the stream of thought occurring concurrently with overt communication about marital conflict. The research considers how marital conflicts may be affected by selective attention to different elements of conflict (different emotions, issues, interactional behaviors, and background events) and by spontaneous attributions about communicative intentions and outcomes. One hundred eighteen couples discussed a current conflict issue, then individually watched a videotape of the discussion and reported thoughts and feelings experienced during the discussion. Descriptively, the thoughts revealed limited complexity, infrequent perspective taking, a predominant concern for implicit relationship issues over content issues, and frequent direct analysis of the communication process. Spouses viewed their own communication in more favorable terms than their partners communication. Husbands and wives also viewed the interactions differently, with wives appearing, in certain respects, more other-directed, relationship-sensitive, and objective. Interaction-based thoughts were especially subjective in the most severe conflicts, as suggested by a lack of correspondence between attributions about communication and observer coding of the interactions. Furthermore, in severe conflicts and dissatisfied relationships, the individuals had more angry, blaming, and pessimistic thoughts and less focus on content issues.

Talk about "hooking up": the influence of college student social networks on nonrelationship sex.

This research considers how communication within college student social networks may encourage high-risk sexual relationships. Students (n = 274) described sexual scripts for hooking up and reported on peer communication, sexual behavior, and sexual attitudes. Students described varied hookup scripts, expressed ambivalent attitudes, and reported moderate participation in hookups overall. However, the most common hookup script, suggesting high-risk sexual activity (i.e., unplanned, inebriated sex), was featured in most accounts of students who themselves participated in hookups. Students overestimated how often others were hooking up, and these estimates were especially inflated by students who frequently talked about hooking up with friends. Among students with strong ties to peers, frequent peer communication about sex predicted participation in hookups and favorable attitudes about hooking up. Peer approval also predicted hookup behavior and attitudes.

The Sequential and Distributional Structure of Conflict Interactions as a Function of Attributions Concerning the Locus of Responsibility and Stability of Conflicts

This study examines the sequential and distributional structure of discussions involving college roommates. Subjects were videotaped discussing a series of conflict issues that typically occur amon...

Relational characteristics of language: Elaboration and differentiation in marital conversations

Our research considered how the language used in marital conversations reflects the nature and definition of close relationships. Two linguistic themes with broad relational implications were identified from previous work: (a) linguistic elaboration, and (b) personal reference. These features were assumed to reflect, respectively, the efficiency of communication and the degree of differentiation versus integration of identities in marriage. In order to test the presumed relational implications of language, we compared indicators of linguistic elaboration and personal reference with relationship characteristics, including marital type, satisfaction, and age. One hundred‐twenty conversations from three prior studies were coded for a number of linguistic and pragmatic features. The results did not support expected associations between elaboration and other relationship characteristics. However, the research mostly supported the presumed relational implications of personal reference. Traditional, satisfied, a...

Life-Stage Differences in Communication During Marital Conflicts

Conversations involving young, middle-aged and retired married couples were analyzed to shed light on the characteristics of communication within older marriages. The research indicated that retired couples were the least analytic and most non-committal in their remarks. Generally, retired couples rated marital problems as non-salient and their conversations were non-conflictive. However, those among the retired group who perceived salient, unresolved problems in the marriage were extremely conflictive, producing chains of reciprocal confrontative statements. Middle-aged couples were also non-conflictive and non-committal in their discussions but, unlike the retired couples, middle-aged couples became analytic when marital problems were salient. Young couples had a comparatively intense, engagement style of interaction, characterized by alternation between analytic, confrontative and humorous remarks. The results suggest that marital communication is shaped by a combination of developmental, life stage and cohort influences.

Reciprocity of Marital Communication

The discussions of seventy-three married couples were analysed for sequential and distributional patterns of paralinguistic affect and verbal conflict. The paralinguistic analyses supported behavioural skills approaches to marital communication: on highly salient topics, less satisfied couples had greater negative reciprocity than more satisfied couples. However, the verbal communication results were inconsistent with prevailing assumptions about effective communication: more satisfied couples had a higher rate of conflict avoidance. Subsequent analyses indicated that the relationship between verbal communication patterns and marital satisfaction depends on a couples implicit expectations and standards of communication. Non-verbal affective patterns appear to have more general meaning than verbal disclosure and conflict avoidance.

Implicit and Explicit Decision-Making Styles in Couples

Occasionally one finds a reference to decision making within couples or families, but the subject has not been pursued as systematically as, say, power, conflict, self-disclosure, companionship, and other blatantly expressive and emotive aspects of interaction. The nature of intimate relationships suggests this emphasis. Intimate relationships are formed for social and companionate reasons. Decision making is a by-product; something that is necessary to maintain the relationship but not a goal in-and-of itself. In contrast, many task and work relationships are formed basically for the purpose of decision making. Thus, the archetypal setting for the study of communication and collaborative decision making has been the task-oriented small group. One way of clarifying the subject of this chapter is to contrast the much studied task-oriented group with the decision making of couples.

A Critical Examination of Sex Differences in Marital Communication.

Despite the persistence of sex‐typed images of the expressivity of wife and husband, past observational studies have given little indication of sex‐linked differences in marital communication. Thus, we proposed that inter personally negotiated role expectations would be a better predictor of communication about marital conflict than sex. However, we also proposed that there might be sex differences within particular clusters of couples who endorse sex‐differentiated role expectations. Couples were classified into groups using Fitzpatricks (1983) typology. The results of two studies indicated that couple type was significantly related to communication about marital conflict; however, there were neither any clear overall sex differences in communication nor sex differences within couple types. Rather, the results indicated that conflict styles are so strongly reciprocal that mutual influence within conversations tends to remove individual speaker differences. The research suggests that mutual influence pro...