Conflict Settings
At the 1972 conference, participants called for studies on a wide array of contexts, including marital conflict, labor-management negotiations, international diplomacy, public conflicts, and even militant confrontations (Simons, 1974b).
Researchers responded to this plea through conducting field studies of actual labor-management negotiations (Friedman, 1995), analyzing transcripts of public sector bargaining (Donohue, 1981b; Putnam, Van Hoeven, & Bullis, 1991), and examining actual and training sessions for hostage negotiations (Donohue & Roberto, 1993; Rogan & Hammer, 1994, 1995). They made audio- or videotapes of conflict interactions between marital partners (Fitzpatrick, Fallis, & Vance, 1982; Sillars et al., 1982), conducted surveys of adolescents and parents about conflict behaviors (Comstock, 1994; Comstock & Buller, 1991), and studied married and dating couples (Fitzpatrick & Winke, 1979; Witteman & Fitzpatrick, 1986). They coded transcripts of divorce mediations, community disputes, and roommate conflicts (Donohue, Allen, et al., 1985; Jones, 1989b; Sillars, 1980b); developed models of intergroup and face negotiation in diplomacy conflicts (Ting-Toomey & Cole, 1990); and even interviewed participants in multiparty environmental conflicts (Putnam & Peterson, 2003). Clearly, communication researchers heeded the advice of their predecessors to focus on situations in which disputants had a conflict history (Mortensen, 1974).Although some researchers continued to use laboratory investigations, they employed buyer-seller negotiations and role-play simulations that enacted real-life experiences, such as students selling used textbooks (Jordan & Roloff, 1997). Researchers also compared communication patterns in actual with simulated teachers’ negotiations (Donohue et al., 1984). Thus, communication scholars have centered their research on real-world conflicts, both in their research designs and their selection of conflict settings.