Charles T. Brown

Gender roles, biological sex, and predisposition to conflict management

The Bem Sex-Role Inventory and the Communication-Conflict Instrument were administered to 182 husbands and wives. Results suggest that gender-role classification is a more significant discriminator of communication behavior than is biological sex. Androgynous spouses, more than feminine though not significantly more so than masculine spouses, reported themselves to be the most disposed to handle conflict constructively. On the subscales of the conflict instrument, androgynous persons had significantly more positive feelings scores than either masculine or feminine persons, plus higher task energy and desire-for-control scores than feminine persons. Similarly, masculine persons reported a significantly greater predisposition to manage conflict constructively than did feminine persons, having higher task energy and desire-for-control scores. Undifferentiated persons reported the lowest scores for conflict management.

Communication-Conflict Predisposition: Development of a Theory and an Instrument

This paper has two objectives. First, it presents a brief informal statement of a theory of the dynamic constructs of personality bearing upon conflicts within and between people. The six dynamics (range of feelings, task energy, respect for community, respect for others, desire for control, and concern for ones own self-uniqueness) are based on the concept-free research of Osgood et al. and Bales. Second, it reports the reliability and validity of an instrument which, using scales for the six dynamics, is designed to measure the degree to which one is predisposed to handle conflict constructively (win-win) or destructively (win-lose). Internal and test-retest reliability of the instrument are acceptable for basic research. Several field studies suggest criterion validity. Construct validity was examined by comparison with three other instruments, which were supportive.

Three studies of the listening of children

EXPERIMENTS in listening, though numerous, have been so inconclusive regarding many aspects of this fundamental skill that the need for further research is great. The broad purpose of the present investigations was to move forward on the basis of earlier studies in ways that the introductions to the three divisions of this paper make specific. The topics for the three studies are respectively (1) relationships between listening ability and the radio and television habits of children, (2) relationships among listening ability, the number of children in the family, and the position of the child among siblings, and (3) relationships among listening, reading, intelligence, and scholastic achievement. The subjects—fourth, fifth, and sixth grade school children— were the same for all three experiments.