Influence Goals

Individuals can identify things about their relational partners that they wish would change (Heyman, Hunt-Martorano, Malik, & Slep, 2009). In some cases, they may decide to change their partners and their attempts are guided by influence goals as well as other objectives they wish to accomplish during an interaction.

Keck and Samp (2007) examined how goals are related to whether individuals have initiated a conflict or are resisting a part­ner’s attempt to influence them. The results indicated that the degree to which initiators viewed self/instrumental goals as important (i.e., the person wanted to maintain a sense of self while influencing the partner to change) increased the likelihood that they would enact distributive actions (i.e., controlling the inter­action while ignoring the partner). In con­trast, initiators endorsing other/identity goals (i.e., supporting the partner’s identity) were more likely to use partner-oriented integrative actions (i.e., validating the partner or his or her statements). When focusing on resistors, the same two patterns were significant, plus two additional ones emerged. Viewing instru­mental goals as important (i.e., simply trying to change the partner) was related to being distributive, and seeing identity/relational goals as important increased the likelihood of issue-oriented integrative behavior (i.e., prob­lem solving).

Additionally, Keck and Samp (2007) found that an individual’s conflict behavior predicted the partner’s subsequent goal. When initiators acted in a distributive way, they increased the likelihood that resistors would form instru­mental goals and decreased the likelihood that they would see other/identity, or identity/ relational goals as important. In effect, pres­sure seemed to cause resistors to exclusively form goals aimed at influencing the initiators. On the other hand, initiators who engaged in issue-oriented integrative actions increased the likelihood that resistors would form iden- tity/relational goals and decreased the likeli­hood that resistors would form influence goals.

As noted in an earlier part of this review, partners sometimes are unable to resolve a conflict in a single encounter, and future argu­mentative episodes occur. Researchers have investigated the goals that individuals have when serial arguing. There appear to be seven primary goals that are sometimes clustered into positive and negative objectives (see Bevan et al., 2007; Bevan, Finan, & Kaminsky, 2008; Bevan, Hale, & Williams, 2004). Positive goals include seeking mutual understanding/ resolution and positive expression, while neg­ative goals include negative expression, decid­ing about relational continuation, dominating/ controlling the partner, changing the partner, and hurting the partner/benefitting self-goals. The importance of the goals is generally stable across types of close relationships (e.g., parent­child, sibling, romantic) with positive expres­sion, mutual understanding/resolution, and changing the target that is being viewed as most important (Bevan, 2010).

Bevan et al. (2007) found that the impor­tance of serial arguing goals predicted self­reported conflict behaviors. Self-reported use of integrative conflict strategies is positively related to the importance of positive expres­siveness and mutual understanding/resolution goals and negatively related to the importance of dominating and controlling the partner, changing the partner, and hurting the partner/ benefiting self-goals.

It is possible that during the course of serial arguing, a person’s motivation to attain goals may change. Bevan et al. (2008) examined the factors that predict whether individuals remain motivated to achieving their serial arguing goals. When examining positive goals, they found identical indirect paths leading from attributing importance to mutual understanding/ resolvability and positive expression goals to motivation. Seeing either goal as important was positively related to self-reported integra­tive conflict behavior that in turn was posi­tively related to ruminating about the conflict, and rumination was positively related to being motivated to achieve goals. In a sense, positive goals stimulate active problem solv­ing during the disagreement and continued thought afterward, which seems to keep indi­viduals committed to their goals. However, there were no statistically significant indirect paths leading from negative goals to motiva­tion. Instead, both integrative and distribu­tive communications were negatively related to the motivation to reach goals because of their tendency to increase rumination about the conflict. Thus, negative goals may set off processes that lower motivation regardless of the type of negative goal.

Unfortunately, research has not investi­gated how people react when conflict goals are attained. The results of a study on aggression suggest that goal attainment could alter the future course of a conflict. Denzler, Forster, and Liberman (2009) found that after a trans­gression, individuals have aggressive thoughts that are easily accessible and make them prone to future aggression unless they have been able to directly or symbolically aggress against their antagonists. Simply acting in an aggressive manner was insufficient to reduce aggressive responding; the aggression must be against the transgressor. Importantly though, nonaggressive resolution of the conflict also decreased accessibility of aggressive thoughts. These findings could indicate that a conflict will continue until individuals feel that their goals have been achieved, which could include reciprocating the partner’s behavior or achiev­ing a resolution to the problem.