Goal Assessment

A goal is generally defined as an idea or state that people want to achieve at some point in the future (Dillard, 1990a; Pervin, 1989).

In addition, goals have cognitive and affective features that influence the activation and orga­nization of behavior.

Goals vary in their content. Clark and Delia (1979) presented a now generally rec­ognized tripartite typology of goals based on content: (a) instrumental goals, which require a response from the partner to deal with a specified problem (usually a request for a resource or favor); (b) identity man­agement (a.k.a. self-presentation or face) goals, which involve presenting a particu­lar image to the partner; and (c) relational goals, which concern defining the nature of the relationship with the partner. Clark and Delia argued that some aspect of all three goals is present to some degree in all communication encounters. According to Waldron (1997), researchers dealing with cognitive properties of conversation have provided confirmation that conversational goals are “multiple and fluid” (p. 205). The instrumental, identity, and relational goals also represent the functions of strategic com­munication that “frame a communication event and that relationship partners expect to achieve as they negotiate definitions and understandings” (Newton & Burgoon, 1990).

Goals lead to the initiation of action, pro­vide people with standards against which to measure the outcomes of their interactions, and give meaning to interaction. Goals also help people understand, at least to some extent, why other people enact certain behav­iors and continue to enact them (Dillard, 1990a). Berger (1997) claimed that social goals (those that involve interaction with another person) are necessary for people to conduct numerous daily activities. He adds that goals serve as the foundation for the plan­ning and plans people must have to achieve their objectives for any interaction. Goals also influence and constrain behavioral choices (Clark & Delia, 1979). According to Dillard (1990b), the primary (influence) goal predicts both cognitive and behavioral effort, whereas secondary goals provide standards of behavior that affect behavioral choices. From a com­municative perspective, however, the most important impact of goals is that when people know what they want to achieve through their interactions, they are more easily able to choose relevant communication behaviors (Clark & Delia, 1979). For example, one study found that people who emphasized relational escalation and maintenance goals engaged in cooperative and direct conflict tactics, whereas people who were primarily concerned with defending their self-presenta­tion more readily used competitive behaviors (Canary et al., 1988).

Goal control refers to the extent to which social actors know what they want and are sensitive to their partner’s goals. People tend to be more successful if they have clear goals and standards for knowing when such goals are met versus when having only a vague idea of what they want and no clear indicates of achievement (Bandura, 1989). Of course, remaining clear about one’s goal is not easy because goals often shift during conflict (Sillars & Weisberg, 1987).

Conflict interactions grow in situations in which people perceive that their partners have goals that clash with their own. Even so, as the interaction begins, both partici­pants want to be seen as competent—that is, as trying to achieve their goals in a way that doesn’t offend the other person (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1984). However, as conflict begins to build, people begin to behave more mindlessly and less strategically. They begin to focus on defensive communication (Canary et al., 1988); they also become less likely to be polite (Schonbach, 1990). People begin to personal­ize the conflict and make negative comments about the other person (Hample & Cionea, 2010; Hample & Dallinger, 1992). They also begin to defend their preferred image and even bring up relational issues completely unrelated to the issue at hand (Donohue & Kolt, 1992).

Competent communicators are mindful of their partner’s goals that might be at risk. We found that being mindful of one’s own goals was positively associated with being perceived as appropriate and effective (Lakey & Canary, 2002). More critically, however, perceptions that the individual was sensitive to the partner’s instrumental, relational, and self­presentation goals were strongly associated with assessments of the individual’s appropri­ateness and effectiveness. That is, the more sen­sitive the other person was to one’s goals, the more that person is seen as appropriate and effective.

Mindfulness allows people to remain pri­marily focused on the instrumental goal and to choose behaviors related not only to that goal but to their relational and self-presentation goals that will lead to a productive outcome of the interaction. Mindful behavior also helps people interpret conflict in ways that are more constructive. When behaving mindlessly, people tend to perceive someone who dis­agrees with them as biased; in contrast, they tend to perceive themselves as objective. As a result, people become more competitive and move further into conflict (Kennedy & Pronin, 2008). Actually, people develop subjective ver­sions of events that reflect their understand­ing of what happened. They forget that they are dealing with only their perception, one that is affected by every stage of the percep­tion process (perceiving different information, organizing information differently, interpret­ing and evaluating information differently, and recalling memories that add or omit bits of information).

In sum, three factors mediate the link between conflict instigation and the enactment of conflict messages: (1) individual differences as represented by a person’s locus of con­trol, (2) interpreting the cause of the conflict using attributions, and (3) ascertaining what goals are at stake. We suggest that people can become more competent to the extent that they become more mindful regarding their efforts to increase personal control, attributional con­trol, and goal control. The following section specifies how people’s choices lead to conflict strategy use and interaction sequences.