Competitive Patterns

Various forms of symmetrical and complementary competitiveness have been reported (e.g., Revenstorf, Hahlweg, Schindler, & Vogel, 1984; Ting-Toomey, 1983). The following example illustrates a symmetrical disagreement-disagreement pattern that lasts approximately 15 turns.

Turn	Speaker	Message
94	Husband	Well, look at what you did. Look at the scene you made!
95	Wife	Yeah, well, you deserved it.
96	Husband	No, I didn’t...
Turn	Speaker	Message
97	Wife	Everybody fights.
98	Husband	deserve that.
99	Wife	So...
100	Husband	No, everybody
101	Wife	Yeah, everybody fights dear. ’cause if they don’t...
102	Husband	Yeah, but not in the presence of company. Not when, honey, we had 15 people.
103	Wife	See, I’m a very prompt [sic] person. I don’t care.
104	Husband	But I do.
105	Wife	I knew everybody there.
106	Husband	Yes, but I DO.
107	Wife	And most of them was [sic] your family, and I couldn’t care what they think anyway.
108	Husband	Well, I do.
109	Wife	Well, I don’t!
110	Husband	Well, then I shouldn’t care what your family thinks.

Reciprocation of negative behavior can also be reflected in complementary messages. Consider two attack-defend exchanges.

In turns 225 to 229, the wife wants the husband

not to shout at the children regarding their watching too much television, and then, in turns 230 to 232, the husband attempts to take the offensive.

Turn	Speaker	Message
225	Wife	And you might ask nicely just as many times as you do unnicely [sic] and end up with the same results. Whether you ask them five times...
226	Husband	I don’t agree with that, because I ask them once nicely and they don’t comply, and then I bark and then they comply.
227	Wife	And you know what? You taught them “I don’t have to comply unless dad barks at me. Until dad’s voice changes and he’s pissed, then I have to comply!” And you’ve trained them to do that.
228	Husband	No.
229	Wife	What you have to do is retrain them and we have to retrain them to show we’re serious.
230	Husband	How do we do that?
231	Wife	One day at a time.
232	Husband	That is not an answer.

And such sequences can continue for some time. For example, Ting-Toomey (1983) found that people in maladjusted relationships more frequently engaged in up to 10 sequences of attack-defend patterns.

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Source: Oetzel John, Ting-Toomey Stella. The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication: Integrating Theory, Research and Practice. SAGE Publications,2013. — 912 p.. 2013

Competitive Patterns

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